


Alea Iacta Est

by Jen (ConsultingWriters)



Series: Magic [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, James Bond - All Media Types, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: 00Q - Freeform, Addiction, Bastardised Latin, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Magic, Marriage, Mental Health Issues, Mild Sexual Content, Muggle/Wizard Relations, Relationship Strain, Sequel to Docendo Discimus, Shipimpala started it!, Teaching, The entire sixth book, With bonus aspects
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-01
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 02:33:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/986635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ConsultingWriters/pseuds/Jen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q begins his second year teaching at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, with James Bond at his side, the Order of the Phoenix behind him. His brother, Sherlock Holmes, a non-practising wizard who is rapidly losing control, attempts something perilously close to A Relationship with John Watson. Mycroft occupies the most boring teaching role in the known world, Harry Potter grows increasingly sexually confused, and Draco Malfoy is horrendously out of his depth.</p><p>Alea Iacta Est: the die has been cast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, ladies and gentlemen!
> 
> After the truly monumental reception Docendo Discimus received, continuing their stories was entirely irresistible. This has been, from the beginning, one of the most exciting writing challenges of my life to date - and the support I had for Docendo was just inspirational, I could never express how much. Shipimpala began it with a series of wonderful gifsets, and my wonderful partner Lex has aided, abetted and cheerleaded from the very start. 
> 
> So, here begins Act Two. I hope you all enjoy. Jen.
> 
> Alea Iacta Est - the die has been cast. Also translated, loosely and colloquially, as 'the game is afoot'. Really, I couldn't resist.

The fog crept in increments, tendrils across the bleak ground; there was a slight frost, keeping the morning dew suspended in icy drops, perpetually barred from falling.

A single man appeared, in the midst of the artificial quiet. A known quantity, but not in this forum; he belonged elsewhere, in the company of very different forms of wizard. There was a story to be told by his presence, and the ground remained still in its own form of welcome.

Breath clouded before his face, convulsions of white; a small wave of his wand, murmured words, and a bright white rat propelled itself forward. It slid through the fog, untouched, easily dissipating the thick grey fog into thin, fresher air.

For now, the Death Eaters lingered in the shadows of trees, finding their own sanctuaries in the black depths where no wizards or Muggles dared go.

The leaves hissed, grass spiking beneath feet, hostility.

“Why do you come here?”

The man tilted his head forward slightly, a gentle bow, eyes roaming instinctively to find the source of the words. The iced breeze curled around his ankles, his robes swaying slightly in spasmodic motions, artificial.

“I am here to pledge allegiance to the Dark Lord,” the man said quietly, not bothering to raise his voice. He would be heard.

Others appeared. Cloaked, hooded, masked. No identifying signs, barring the sashaying form of the indomitable Bellatrix Lestrange. She, unlike her fellows, did not bother with concealing herself; her pride and arrogance dictated that she always be obvious. She: the greatest supporter, the greatest lover, of the Dark Lord.

They closed in, established ranks, organised and prepared; the newcomer could be destroyed in an instant, if they so chose.

The man did not flinch, a smile curling the corners of his lips upwards. “I may prove an asset,” he stated softly, lilting. “You know I am of your type, of your regime, hmm?”

Angry hissing, a throttled sound. The obvious slide of a large bulk, approaching with remarkable speed, more dangerous than the ranks of Death Eaters by quite a considerable margin.

The Dark Lord was there. He watched. He _knew_.

“Your arrogance is unfitting,” the voice told him, quite calmly, an unequivocal statement. “You are _nothing_.”

The man dipped his head in almost-mocking acceptance, waiting for further judgement. Bellatrix cackled with untempered joy, the laugh of a small child with a new plaything, waiting for the chance to shatter it into pieces.

From out of the distant shadows, another figure walked. Robes fell to the floor about his feet, wand held in delicate fingers, an almost flippant motion bringing the newcomer to his knees. “I have been waiting for your arrival, Raoul Silva,” he stated, dark red eyes burning in a chalk-white face.

Silva didn’t bother to conceal his smirk. “I am quite your type,” he stated, without undue fear, humour riding through his tone. All of this, this _posturing_ ; it was something he was well-versed in, was hardly intimidated by.

The Dark Lord let out a quiet laugh, echoing in the silence. His followers repeated the gesture, a low thread that circled about the kneeling man, heady and intoxicating, the drugged infection of a cult of those whose thoughts mimicked one another’s.

“You believe you are one of us?”

A glance upwards, eyes meeting daringly, and a single nod.

_“Legilimens.”_

A shallow exhale, and Silva’s life flickered. His thoughts, ambitions. Of course, at the fore was his experimental period with little Q Holmes, such a lovely boy, so tender and so breakable. The last year of his existence, the darkest facets of his personality brought forward and revelled in, drawing out a smile from the Dark Lord.

It was curious, witnessing what none had ever known of Silva. A quiet penchant for Dark magic; tests and experiments, tortures of smaller creatures, memory charms and corruption, coercion. A catalogue of smaller cruelties, never once pinned to him, skirting gorgeously around the edges of the law. He loathed the Order of the Phoenix, very much prepared to destroy them if required.

Silva would be a risky investment. He was selfish, beyond all else. Self-interest dominated even the cruellest of his ambitions; he could manipulate everybody and everything, to achieve his underlying agendas.

He made no apology for it, did not even try to conceal it. Silva would betray the Dark Lord in an instant if he believed it was to his benefit; however, it was patently clear that he understood the Dark Lord to be the correct group to back, over the coming months and years.

A deeply talented wizard, ultimately. He was prepared to devote himself to the Dark Lord’s cause entirely – for whatever personal motives – and frankly, there were insufficient devotees to the cause at present.

“What do we think, my dear ones?” the Dark Lord called to his fellows; a quiet fell, a deferential pause, waiting for the Dark Lord’s decision. Bloodlust clouded a couple, fingers inching towards their wands optimistically.

After all; none approached the Dark Lord without due cause. Either they remained among the ranks, or their bodies were left to rot in artificial quiet, indefinitely.

“Extend your arm.”

Silva’s smile was sycophantic and wide, lifting his left arm, rolling up the sleeve in preparation.

The Death Eaters shifted, exchanged glances, a cascading laugh trickling from Bellatrix’s lips. The Mark was one of the most painful experiences in their memories, a collective scar on the psyche of a collection of people, prepared to swear eternal allegiance to the greatest Dark wizard in history.

An eloquent wave, the tip of the Dark Lord’s wand held against skin.

Silva naturally screamed, the sound mutating into a curious laugh, a strangled and victorious crow that encapsulated all that he was, all that he now would be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Decided to update a little earlier than anticipated, given that the last chapter was very short indeed.
> 
> Thank you (good lord above) for the stellar reception that this has already, simply as a concept. Blimey. I'm still in absolute awe at how much you guys are enjoying this, and Docendo, and I could never thank you all enough. I hope it doesn't disappoint, ultimately. Jen.

“This,” Sherlock hissed, every inch the petulant child. “is the greatest waste of time, money and effort I have ever known in my life. Surely this constitutes _too much_ effort, Mycroft?”

Mycroft sighed, wearing an elegantly martyred expression and a truly lovely suit. “Quite honestly, it could have been far worse. Such events are usually far more _elaborate_ ; I would think this constituted restraint.”

“I wonder why,” Q muttered darkly, straightening his bow tie and staring daggers at his siblings. The pair had been griping at one another since being forced into the same space; Q was mostly just trying to make himself look faintly presentable, and hopefully quell the raging nerves that were making his heart feel about ready to force out through his sternum.

Sherlock, and his absolute refusal to demonstrate actual support, was not helping. “It’s known as a shotgun wedding, in the real world,” he groused, lying resplendent on Q and Bond’s bed, expression slightly twisted but not wholly malicious.

Q and Mycroft both turned to him, in unison, identical expressions. “Shall I?” Mycroft asked Q lightly.

“Go ahead,” Q muttered, waving his head to get Mycroft away, returning his attention to the mirror with the groan of the imminently condemned.

Mycroft fixed Sherlock with a purely patronising stare. “Shotgun weddings refer to unwanted pregnancies, _not_ the phenomenon of an increase in marriages due a sociological upheaval,” he said crisply, as Sherlock rolled his eyes, looked emphatically at Q, and snorted.

Q whipped around, wand out. “One more word, and I’ll cast a Silencing Charm on you,” he said, very seriously, body vibrating with anger. “This is quite an important day, and I’ve had just about enough of you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Sherlock returned, eyes narrowed.

There was an understanding, universally, that nobody used magic on Sherlock. Possibly, this was to do with whatever had happened at the Ministry for Magic in the time Sherlock had been incarcerated there, studied and imprisoned for simply not wishing to study or practise magic.

Possibly, it was to do with Sherlock being a stubborn bastard, who simply didn’t want to have anything to do with the Wizarding world.

Q shook his head, placing the wand to one side for a moment. If Sherlock continued as he was, Q probably _would_ jinx him, if Mycroft didn’t beat him to it.

Instead, Q was subjected to the tiring indignity of Mycroft trying to make his youngest brother look presentable; he did some form of trickery with his wand that was presumably supposed to do something to his hair, succeeding in making a few strands wearily concede defeat while the others obnoxiously stood on end, proud and defiant and horribly messy.

Q let out a small, dejected noise. “Why can’t John be with _me_ , anyway?” Sherlock whined; Q waved his own wand at his hair like Mycroft had done, sincerely regretting it a heartbeat later and making Mycroft re-fix it.

“He’s Bond’s best man,” Q returned.

The rest lay unsaid: it would have been Sirius.

The memorial had been quiet, understated. Very few people had known Sirius Black; the world mostly believed him a mass murderer, rather than a man with an excellent sense of humour who had been framed. Azkaban had broken something in Sirius, and Grimmauld Place – Bond, John, a host of other Order members – had very nearly made it come alive again.

Bond did not succumb easily to grief. Since his parents had died – Death Eater raid, when Bond was barely eleven – he had refused to allow grief to hold sway over him. A while spent working with the Ministry had certainly helped, inuring him to forms of humanity that could still be seen once in a while, tainted the easy freedom of a man who had so much to live for.

Q had never asked too much about Bond’s Ministry days, because Bond had no interest in discussing the matter. It was simply enough to help through the nightmares, and understand that he would never know how it felt, to lose yet another person. Bond and Sirius had been very close towards the end, after all.

The thought dislodged with some difficulty, but out of necessity.

“Ready?” Mycroft asked with surprising, almost uncharacteristic gentleness; he was never one to treat anybody like glass, given a near-blanket aversion to any form of emotion. Yet for today, he was making a true effort, trying to talk Q off a metaphorical ledge as it crept ever closer to what Q considered one of the most important moments of his life.

Q looked at his eldest brother, and nodded once, shortly. “Sherlock?”

“Have been for hours,” he muttered languidly, arching his body off the bed with acquired weariness. “How are we getting there?”

There was a certain malicious joy that came with turning to Sherlock, a vaguely maniacal grin plastered in place, to tell him: “We’re Apparating.”

Of course, Sherlock point-blank refused to go. He actually wasted several minutes being chased around Grimmauld Place, before Q’s sanity was stretched to its literal limits. “Sherlock, you little shit, get the fuck down here so I can get to my own _bloody_ wedding, before I curse you into oblivion and back.”

Sherlock begrudgingly emerged from the shadows, eyebrow raised. “I...”

Before Sherlock could get a further syllable out, Mycroft grabbed his brother’s arm, yanked him to the front door, and twisted on the spot while still on the doorstep; they vanished instantly, presumably still out of the view of any Muggles while the Fidelius charm worked.

Q took a moment to himself, the last couple of minutes on his own. The ache that never left his body was still present, but muted nicely by John’s potions; John had only improved with time, as he became ever more accustomed to Wizarding materials. Anybody nearby with a wand helped with the fiddly magic aspects, but mostly, John was a very passable potioneer.

Every thought kept flying in every direction, before refocusing. Clarity. The tips of Q’s fingers brushed over the empty space where a ring would be sitting imminently; they had decided against engagement rings, given that they had managed a delay of exactly four and a half weeks from Bond’s proposal, to the day itself.

Stepping out onto the front step, cold air hit him; everything was cold these days, despite it being the middle of July. The rain was unseasonable, even for England; Q had optimistically wondered if it might clear a little, but it resolutely was not, and the reasons why were unpleasant enough for him to try and stop contemplating it too hard.

Honestly, Q had run out of thoughts to procrastinate over.

He took a step forward, twisted in place, and vanished.

-

Q had only ever been to the venue once, about eight months after he and Bond had first started dating. After a while, Bond had decided he wanted to show Q where he had grown up; Q nodded, letting Bond wrap an arm around his waist and transport him all the way to _Scotland_.

It was common knowledge that Bond was not the type to languish in memories. He had moved cleanly on from his childhood, left no legacy behind, nothing to suggest he would ever want to hold his wedding in a place that held so many unpleasant memories.

Honestly, if it hadn’t been such a security nightmare finding anywhere else, they probably would not have chosen Skyfall Manor.

As it was, Q had to concede that it had been rendered almost unrecognisable. The cold, dank stone was obscured and grown and decorated and embellished, the entire building seeming full of _life_ , rather than the dying shadows Q remembered from their brief visit.

“Was wondering if you’d be coming for a moment there,” Remus commented, with a smile; Q glanced around, finding Remus in a neat-looking dark grey suit, waiting for him in the middle of the bleak field. “Follow me, we’re almost ready.”

Q had literally no idea of what was happening. The moment they had announced to a delighted, but not overly surprised, collection of Order members, everything had been taken out of their hands. Given that neither Q nor Bond had any surviving parents, Molly’s maternal instincts had reached hitherto unknown proportions. Tonks had helped, Mycroft had aided and abetted, and Sherlock had shot out various acerbic comments and actually been rather helpful at points, despite loudly asserting that he would never support such stupidity.

There were, thankfully, not too many people. Given that the legality was – at best – foggy, it seemed prudent to keep it confined to friends and family. De facto, the entire Order of the Phoenix had turned up to support Q and Bond.

“Errant groom has arrived,” Remus called to a figure up ahead. “I’ll leave you with Sherlock. Good luck, Q.”

Remus disappeared, remarkably abrupt, handing him over to somebody else’s custody. Sherlock was resting against the doorframe into Skyfall Manor, looking delectably bored, and terrifyingly gorgeous in a black suit. Q walked up to him, feeling underdressed and like Bond was probably choosing the wrong Holmes, while Mycroft hovered somewhere further indoors. “’Lock,” Q murmured, straightening his cuffs. “Do you think I’m making the right decision?”

Of all people, Q trusted Sherlock to tell him the truth. Even Mycroft would lie, when he thought it necessary; Sherlock was unflinchingly, brutally honest. Always.

Sherlock looked over his younger brother. Too young, but getting older by the minute, more mature than he should have needed to be. Responsible, brilliant, independent, and sickeningly in love.

He rolled his eyes.

“Well _obviously_ ,” he told Q flatly, and managed to give his brother a small, half-sarcastic smile.

Q seemed to grow two or three inches in that moment, taking a breath, exhaling slowly. “Merlin’s teeth, I’m actually doing this,” he muttered.

Sherlock’s smile became far more genuine. “So it would seem,” he returned, and strode – not inside, as Q had expected – but around the outside of the building, Q walking behind, feeling infinitely more confident. “This way. I thankfully am divested of all responsibly after you reach a certain point, so do please try not to die in the interim.”

“I’ll do my best,” Q returned, as drily as he could manage under the circumstances.

They rounded the corner, and Q gasped.

Bond and Q had stipulated, to their excitably forming wedding committee, that there was to be nothing garish. Balloons and confetti and gold and silver sparkles were quite definitely off the table.

Everybody was rather upset about that fact; after all, the weather was atrocious with the Death Eaters clouding the skies, and Scotland is not a very cheerful place at the best of times.

Yet somehow – impossibly – everything was light. Soft bubbles of pearlescent light floated gently, flickering kaleidoscopic ribbons trickling across the grass, through the simple legs of chairs, any rain caught by a gossamer-thin canopy that seemed to glow, capturing the rounded edges of the different light sources and diffusing them, in a gentle melee of warmth and colour and energy.

Sherlock’s smile had reached the stage of an almost grin, and Mycroft looked prouder than Q knew he was capable of looking. “Thank you,” Q mumbled at his brothers; Sherlock rolled his eyes, and Mycroft raised an eyebrow, and Q snorted out a small laugh because really, that was the pair of them all over.

To Q’s unending surprise, there was no unknown minister standing at the front. Wizarding weddings needed a Ministry official; they were Magically bound to Wizarding law, performing the ceremony creating a legal contract which did not require any paperwork.

Instead of a Ministry official, Dumbledore was waiting.

Albus looked over Q, smiling with untempered joy. Q resolved to ask the questions later, at which point he would be informed that while Dumbledore had been stripped of his Order of Merlin, he was still technically joined to the Ministry laws. “ _And anyway_ ,” Albus said later, eyes twinkling lightly. “ _Love is a funny form of magic. Wizarding laws cannot govern it. It matters very little whether they think I should perform the ceremony or not; love binds people in ways no Wizard or Muggle alike could hope to understand._ ”

Q sighed out a breath, scanning over the handfuls of chairs in neat, ordered rows. Most of the Hogwarts staff had put in appearances; Minerva looked tearful and hopeful, Filius excitable, Sybill already snorting into a tissue despite nothing having started yet. The other teachers remained scattered, Hagrid lurking at the back with an appropriate-sized chair and a tablecloth instead of a handkerchief.

Tonks and Remus sat side by side, Remus still wearing the shadows of grief. The Weasleys had all congregated, en masse; a sea of ginger, broken by a bushy-haired girl and the familiar dark mess of Harry Potter’s hair. Bond and Q had agreed to allow them to attend, given that there was a solidarity that had come with everybody fighting together in the Ministry.

They were united by grief for a time, after Sirius died. It seemed about time they were united by something better.

Sherlock and Mycroft stood by Q’s side, waiting, acting as witnesses. John – who preceded Bond by a matter of seconds, in reaching the venue – would be the first official Muggle witness to a Wizarding wedding in history.

Bond looked _extraordinary_.

Q breathed out a soft _oh_ , looking over the swirling mass of his robes, sharp black, a Muggle-inspired suit beneath. Blond hair was combed perfectly, blue eyes bright and accentuated by threads of ice blue within the black of the robe, silver and blue embroidered, a mirror of Q’s green and gold. Professor Sinestra – whom Q and Bond knew as Aurora – had made them for the wedding, her gift to the pair.

Bond moved to Q’s side, smiling in a way that honestly took Q’s breath away. “Hi,” he murmured, inaudible to all but each other.

Honestly, Q just felt like a teenager all over again, faced with a stupendously gorgeous man and wondering what on earth words were, and how he could use them without sounding like an idiot.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Albus began, in the level tone each person in the area knew so well. “We are here today to celebrate the union of two young people in love, formalising their relationship in front of their loved ones...”

Somewhere, various members of the room were beginning to sob. Q simply could not stop staring at James, wishing this moment would never ever end, that he could take everything and keep it indefinitely.

“Do you, James, take Q...”

One of the Weasley twins let out an audible _aww_ of disappointment at not being given Q’s full name; Q couldn’t help a faint snort, mirrored in the broadening of Bond’s smile, and their fingers lacing together.

“And do you, Q, take James...”

Distantly, Q hoped that Harry Potter was watching, and beginning to understand that love did not necessarily listen to reason, or common sense, or time or place or logic or convenience. That love was precious, and could not be wasted.

“I now pronounce you partners for life.”

Stars fell in showers over their heads, tangling in Q’s loose curls and scattering off his eyelashes, a burst of beauty as Q was taken into Bond’s arms, kissed, and realised the entire thing had passed faster than he knew possible.

“I love you,” Q told Bond simply.

Bond smiled sideways, squeezing their linked fingers, the entire world stopping just for Q. “I love you, too,” he replied, and his smile was absolutely _blinding_.

The rest moved quickly.

Albus seemed childishly delighted with the entire day, as a whole; he waved his wand, the chairs mutating into a floor space as applause broke through the air, lifting the murk. It was surprisingly warm, Q noticed belatedly, and found himself wondering at the various features that had been installed to make the entire day possible.

Champagne bottles floated of their own volition, Q was accosted by everybody in the room at once to congratulate him, and they led their way onto the dancefloor.

Q sincerely hoped that Bond knew what he was doing, because he certainly didn’t, and while John’s potions were excellent he really, _really_ didn’t want to test his body overmuch with dancing.

Music swelled, and Q found himself very _weightless_ , all of a sudden.

Bond’s lips moved to his ear. “You owe Minerva for this,” he murmured, and pulled back to see Q’s wide-eyed stare. He could move his feet, but they barely impacted; everything was being orientated around Bond, it was like dancing on your father’s feet when three years old.

In such circumstances, Q could almost pass for coordinated. ‘Elegant’ would be a stretch, but it was definitely better than the alternative; Q made a mental note to thank Minerva profusely, later.

Around them, everybody else started to join; Tonks and Remus danced slowly with a tangible sense of painful melancholy, Dumbledore pulling Minerva in, the Weasley twins dancing together which seemed oddly apt, Bill and Fleur – who had just announced their own engagement, the previous week – and everything rising in a steady peak.

Q rested his cheek on Bond’s shoulder for a moment, breathing him in. “And so it begins,” he breathed, without conscious intention.

Bond nudged his head up, scanning his face carefully, hand moving to brush over the cheekbones. “Yes,” he agreed softly. “It does.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, as ever, for reading. I would love to hear any and all thoughts! Jen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy, my darlings! I'm being kind for now... give it time...  
> Flaming hell guys, by the way, thank you so much for the impossible levels of enthusiasm already... I'm terrified I'll let y'all down now... O.O LOVE YOU GUYS. THANK YOU.
> 
> (Ps - placeofold, told you Johnlock would start being more prevalent!!)
> 
> Jen.

The reception was, overall, an outstanding success.

Q spent the majority of it with Bond, occasionally handed over to others for dances or brief conversations; the definite upside to it being a very small ceremony was that Q didn’t have to waste energy pandering to people he barely knew, but pretended to care about. Instead, he had people he knew and cared for – or knew Bond cared for – being themselves, which was far more fun.

Sherlock gave him a hug with a martyred expression, and a swallowed _congratulations_ that both pretended hadn’t happened for the sake of Sherlock’s pride. John was an unending delight, managing to access Firewhiskey and proceeding to get drunk in a way that stopped just short of being humiliating.

At about midnight, John finally gained the nerve to try and kiss Sherlock again. The latter had been relatively free of unintentional magical outbursts, and of all times, a wedding seemed appropriate to state intentions.

Q and Mycroft had placed bets, as to whether Sherlock would concede sentiment for Doctor Watson or not. Mycroft believed that Sherlock’s stubbornness would outweigh his desire; Q, who knew better than Mycroft how it felt to fall for another, believed that all of Sherlock’s pontificating would go out of the window.

In addition to being married, Q finished the evening two Galleons better off. Sherlock and John were found, fifteen minutes later, by the side of the lake. Sherlock was glowing – it seemed that his magic was still a touch unstable, the glow was golden and very much literal – and John was very disinclined to let Sherlock go.

Mycroft smirked, grabbed the pair of them, and Disapparated; a few minutes later, he reappeared minus John and Sherlock. “I believe they will find you at a later stage, to issue thanks et cetera,” he said to Q, and handed over the money on the spot.

There were some less promising aspects to the evening. As far as Q was concerned, the true tragedy was watching Harry and Ginny Weasley – whom Potter had already kissed, the preceding Christmas – dance for most of the night. Ron Weasley watched with anger visible under the surface, Hermione Granger not nearly enough of a distraction for the time being, and Q sighed with genuine sadness for a heartbeat or so.

That was, until Bond swept him over for something to eat, and another couple of drinks. Everything promptly went out of Q’s head. “I meant to say,” Bond told him, over the music. “You look extraordinary.”

Q quirked a smile. “Well yes, I did make an effort,” he parried, pressing closer to Bond’s body. “Are we obligated to stay much longer? Handsome as you look in those robes...”

Bond tilted his chin up, and dropped a quick kiss on his lips. “Your wish is my command,” he purred, making Q feel oddly shivery. 

The party would rage for a few more hours. Arthur and Molly Weasley got happily drunk together, and Disapparated themselves home to the Burrow after a certain point; their various children pretended not to notice. They were due to use a Portkey that Dumbledore would enchant for them, when the party wrapped up; meanwhile, Albus managed to dance with absolutely everybody at the reception. He was actually a very good dancer, and had a contagious joy for everything about the day as a whole that nobody could – or wanted to – deny.

Just before Q left, he was approached by Mycroft; to Q’s unending worry, the man looked honestly awkward. “John asked me to give you this,” he said, with a slight cough to clear his throat. “I believe it will negate pain, briefly, while you are engaging... well, any physical exertions, shall we say.”

“For the love of Merlin, stop talking,” Q said quickly, taking the vial. John had warned about potions like this; they were excellent for short-term, but Q would suffer a fair deal the next morning as everything else would be rendered less effective.

To be honest, it was going to be worth it.

Bond and Q Disapparated under a storm of fireworks, turning the murky night sky electric.

It was very dark, wherever they had landed. Not a soul was around, no streetlamps or anything useful.

“Lumos minima,” Bond murmured, holding Q close in his arms; his wand lit very faintly, betraying a cottage house that Q had only ever seen before in a memory. “Sherlock found it,” Bond explained. “A client owed him a favour, and this was it: we have it for the week. John’s left you all the potions you’ll need. It’s a Muggle house, as is the village...”

Q walked closer, keeping Bond with him. “I’m sure that can all be explained later,” he said firmly, cutting over Bond’s speech, and headed for the door. “Accio key?” he ventured hopefully.

The key whizzed up, and hit him in the face. “Alohomora wouldn’t have done?” Bond asked rhetorically, as Q fumbled for the key before finally managing to get it in the lock.

“Oh, piss off,” Q grinned.

The door shut with Q pinned against the other side, Bond kissing him with bruising force, bodies trapped against the wood and writhing, pushing, breathing, until everything else blurred into insignificance.

-

A week later, Bond and Q returned to Grimmauld Place, wearing the smiles of the recently lucky. Q dreamily smirked at everybody in the vicinity, while Bond demonstrated hitherto unseen levels of people skills as he animatedly discussed the week everybody had had.

The most exciting thing was the OWL and NEWT results, which had come out by owl over the week; Scamander and Myrmidon plaintively sat in the corner of Bond and Q’s room with a neat pile of their joint correspondence, the exam results in an envelope, green ink proudly declaring _Professors Q and James Bond_.

Q looked at it, and smiled; he hadn’t had a last name since he was ten years old, not properly. Now, he had a newly adopted surname, and it felt _right_ on him.

He slit open the letter, pages of thick parchment falling into his hands. “And?” Bond asked for a moment, angling over Q’s shoulder. “Well. About predicted, then. Didn’t think Granger would swing an Outstanding in Defence though, bet your practise group’s to blame...”

It was a good series of results, overall. To Q’s immense pride, even Longbottom had scraped a pass. In his NEWT classes, the grades were all EE’s and over. “Ha,” he said contentedly, scanning it through a second time. “Oh, and looks like you’ll have Weasley in your class next year too...”

Bond was oddly, worryingly quiet. Q glanced at him, catching sight of an uncomfortable expression that didn’t quite suit him. “James?” Q asked, with a note of warning. He could see where the conversation was going already, and did _not_ like it.

“Q... I’m not going back to Hogwarts,” Bond told him gently.

Q raised an eyebrow. “Operio,” he muttered at the open door, which closed with an unfairly loud bang. “Explain?”

“The Order needs me here,” Bond said carefully, apologetically. “Hogwarts can survive without me, you’ve proven that. There’s work to be done outside, in the rest of the world. Also, I was never technically cleared of the charges concerning child welfare in Hogwarts; Dumbledore is not widely trusted, and there would be parental ‘concerns’, quote unquote...”

It would have been truly horrific news, had Q not been anticipating as much. “I’m going to miss you,” he said softly. “I... I thought you might. Hogwarts with Dumbledore in charge, though – I can see you, weekends et cetera, you could come visit. And anyway, I need somebody to continue my training...”

When everything had calmed in the wake of the Ministry debacle, Q had turned to Bond, and announced that he wanted training in defensive magic. His NEWT in Defence Against the Dark Arts had certainly kept him alive, but against Death Eaters, he needed more specific and more thorough training. The rest of them were Aurors, had been trained over the years, or were simply more experienced; Q was the youngest of the ‘adult’ Order members, and knew he was outclassed.

Bond had refused. Q had informed him that if Bond wouldn’t, then he would find somebody who would.

As it was, most of the Order ended up joining in. Of course, there were limited amounts that could initially be done, while Q was easily exhausted and handling chronic pain; obstreperousness and potions had done wonders in helping them over that hurdle.

Q was being flatly honest: he wanted to continue learning, while in Hogwarts, and especially from Bond.

Bond smiled, kissed Q chastely. “I thought you were going to be an absolute nightmare when I told you,” he admitted.

Q just smirked. “Work on your powers of subtlety, and consider all possible variations of ‘absolute nightmare’, before deciding whether you believe I will be one or not,” he advised, wondering just how far he could push Bond ‘making it up’ to him. “Who’s taking over?”

“No news yet,” Bond replied, striding to the door. “But I’m not worried. It can’t be worse than bloody Dolores Umbridge, in any case.

-

It transpired that actually, it _could_ be worse. “Snape?” Bond asked, in a voice that was inspirationally dangerous. “ _Snape_?!”

Q sipped his tea, intelligently deigning to not say a word on the subject. It was already turning into a bad week; the news had reached Grimmauld Place that Florean Fortescue had disappeared, his shop destroyed. Everybody found the news rather shocking, but none more so than Bond and Q; they had been regulars there every summer, from their very first date to an ice cream just after their engagement.

Fortescue had been a wonderful man. He talked incessantly about anything and everything, had a type of joy and gentleness about him. There was no reason for him to have been taken out by the Death Eaters; he was simply a hallmark of a world the Death Eaters would prefer to not survive.

Q actually felt a little uncomfortable letting the various children of the Order into Diagon Alley, with matters as they were; the Weasley family were all heavily affiliated with the Order, Harry and Hermione were similarly clouded by association and personality, and the last thing Q wanted was to find that any of them had been hurt simply picking up school equipment.

As it was, Q refused to go. Bond literally couldn’t go; while St Mungo’s had been bullied into letting him in a few months previously, Bond was definitely not widely liked by the Wizarding community. The Prophet had caused a media frenzy, and – to use Remus’s blunt term, when discussing the matter – shit stuck.

It didn’t matter. Q just needed to make sure he could get to and from Grimmauld Place without undue worry, and the rest could be ordered in by owl; there was little more Q needed to do. He had his curriculums, and was unbelievably excited about being able to teach his favourite subject in the world to impressionable witches and wizards.

Bond was getting to the stage of seriously contemplating using _silencio_ on his own husband, just to stop hearing about Arithmancy. The news that Snape – a man Bond considered repugnant in every way – was taking over Defence Against the Dark Arts was just too much.

Q sipped his tea, and offered placatory statements whenever Bond paused for breath. He tried to broach the question of who was teaching Potions now, but was blithely ignored. Sherlock didn’t help; he had become something of a fixture in the corner of Grimmauld Place, intermittently aiding and abetting irritable human beings. “You should go to Hogwarts,” he suggested, sounding very serious. “Speak to Dumbledore...”

“Oh, for the love of Merlin,” Q hissed at his big brother; Sherlock just grinned in a way that was purely maniacal, and settled back to watch with glee. “Sherlock, shut up. You’re not helping. James – it’s fine. You’re a better teacher, you know that, and you _want_ to be here with the Order...”

“... cooped up like a chicken, laying eggs and clucking on demand...”

“ _SHERLOCK_ ,” Q snapped furiously. “That’s _enough_. Go waste your spare energy glowing, why don’t you?”

It was a little bit of a low blow, but Q couldn’t honestly claim to be very repentant. 

Sherlock could not deal with emotional extremes, in any sense, since whatever had been done to him in Department of Mysteries. In his usual obstreperous manner, Sherlock refused to breathe a word of what had happened; some reactions therefore remained lethal, and others – it transpired – caused a yellow-gold glow to spread across his entire skin. It was triggered by John’s kiss, and only continued to intensify.

To universal hilarity, Sherlock had continued to glow for about two days after the wedding. It had been named the ‘magic post-orgasm glow’ – probably by one of the Weasley twins – and it made a resurgence every time he and John were intimate physically or mentally. It was reaching the stage where a certain type of smile could make Sherlock slightly glow-in-the-dark.

Sherlock accepted none of it, and continued life as though nothing unusual was occurring. He just happened to emit light.

“James, you’ll be back in Hogwarts soon enough, and I’m sure Dumbledore...”

“... wanted the job for years, resented me from the outset...”

“... will let you go back. Snape is a far better potioneer than defensive magician, and you _know_ that,” Q said calmly, firmly. “If not, I’ll... I don’t know, jinx him out of it. Or jinx Mycroft, so he’ll piss off out of Hogwarts. I’m slightly dreading it.”

Sherlock, in the background, snickered. Q took a breath, reminding himself for the _billionth_ time that he Absolutely Must Not jinx Sherlock. Apart from being very bad form to jinx a non-practising wizard, there was always the chance that he’d get angry, and blow up the kitchen rather than glow benevolently.

Instead, Q pinched the bridge of his nose, and stormed out of the kitchen. Bond’s petulance was really not very welcome, with not long before the beginning of term, infinite things to prepare, the fact that he was about to leave Bond behind and go to Hogwarts _again_ and didn’t want to spend the last of the holiday arguing about something so absurd.

After a moment, Bond followed, appearing in the doorway and closing it behind with a deft flick of his wand. “Q?”

“I’m going to miss you,” Q said crossly.

Bond just smiled, wand in hand. He gave it a gentle, languid flick; to Q’s exasperation and amusement, his cardigan tried to pull off his shoulders. Ever since Q had discovered that Bond knew that spell, it had been used and abused in a number of contexts; Bond had yet to quite pay Q back for the moment he stripped Bond of his shirt, midway through a discussion with John.

Speaking of which: there was a light knock on their door. Q tugged his cardigan back in place, rolling his eyes at Bond’s pout. “Hello?” he called.

John came in, looking relatively harassed. “Can I borrow one of you?” he asked. “I’m trying to make a Sleeping Draft, and Hedwig won’t wake up.”

“You’re not supposed to use Sleeping Potions on animals,” Bond pointed out; John’s expression contracted in anger for a moment, lips framing Sherlock’s name like a particularly nasty expletive.

“Anyway,” he muttered. “I was hoping you could help me out _before_ Harry and the rest get back?”

Q raised an eyebrow. “He doesn’t know?”

John managed to look remarkably unrepentant, with an expression that perfectly echoed a million memories of Sherlock since his earliest childhood. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” he shrugged. “Sherlock drugged my ex-girlfriend’s dog more times than I could count, and it survived.”

Bond smirked, and Q didn’t quite manage to suppress a laugh. “That may have been more malice than scientific endeavours,” he pointed out; John just about kept himself from blushing, looking between them with obvious anticipation. Thankfully, he hadn’t inherited Sherlock’s imperious, expectant manner when asking for favours.

Actually, John had the potential to be lethal, if he combined his and Sherlock’s traits.

Q shook the thought from his head, and went to _ennervate_ an unwittingly unconscious owl.

-

The last few days before term began consisted of Q learning as much defensive magic as he feasibly could; the main dining room of Grimmauld Place was cleared for the purpose, and Q was facing both Bond and Remus with an expression of utter determination, wand ready.

A sharp jet of light; Q deflected it nonverbally, letting it rebound off into Bond. The spell ricocheted a few further times, the two assailants throwing out others to distract, Q whirling and moving with acquired speed.

The problem came in Q’s lack of physical stamina. He tried, valiantly hard, but could only get so far; as more and more spells came at him, he found his reactions incrementally slowing. He breathed out with as much control as he could manage, keeping the spells instinctive as he had been taught, letting his subconscious take over control of his spellwork.

Spells flew at insistent, impossible speed; a jet caught Q in the shoulder, electricity spasming through his arm. His wand clattered to the floor, and he could do nothing more than duck – very, very fast – to avoid another jet hitting. “Better,” Bond called, by his side in an instant to help him stand.

“Use whatever range of movement you have,” Remus advised, conjuring a glass out of thin air, tipping water from the end of his wand into it and handing it to Q. A moment later, he had somehow pulled chocolate from inside his robes. “Eat it. It helps.”

Q was used to Remus and chocolate; he snapped off a few squares, handing the rest back. “Thank you both,” he said, as always. They waved him off, protesting vehemently that it was no worry, that they were more worried about hurting him, that this was necessary and Q had nothing to thank them for.

There was a tentative knock at the door. “Are you all done in there?” Ginny Weasley asked. “Mum’s got dinner ready, and Sherlock used her best saucepan to do something to beetle eyes so she’s not in a good mood...”

Q rolled his eyes, flicking his wand; a small spasm of muscle made the door swing too-violently, cracking into the wall and making everybody wince a little. “I cannot wait for that to bloody well wear off,” Q griped, looking at his wand arm with annoyance.

Bond swept to his side, linking an arm around his waist. “It’ll go,” he assured his partner, for the nth time, and led him down to the kitchen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any and all thoughts are perpetually appreciated! Jen.


	4. Chapter 4

A few days later, and it had become painfully, patently obvious that Sherlock was losing his mind. John tempered his newfound rage relatively well, but there was a sting that came with his once-blogger being better known, better liked, more _useful_ than Sherlock, in the Order.

After all, John was practically using magic. Despite having not a single quirk of magic in his blood, he had managed to take the science and practicalities of magic theory and technique, and apply them as best he could. Potions and wizarding medicine were his specialities, but he had been trapped in Grimmauld Place for literally ten months. If he wanted to avoid boredom turning him completely insane, he needed more to do.

So, he branched out. Q gave him Arithmancy lessons, in exchange for everything John had done for him.

John hated it, to put matters extremely mildly. Mathematics, in a Muggle sense, had never been his favourite subject; Arithmancy, which took the predictable logic of human numbers and applied magic to them, was purgatorial for John.

He continued doggedly, regardless. Q privately held out very little hope, but it gave John something to do other than Astronomy; he had written off most of Astronomy as absolute codswallop, and it was difficult to convince him otherwise.

Personally, Q wanted to somehow introduce John to Divination. That, he thought with a slightly wicked snort, was likely to be funny.

Sherlock, on the other hand, refused to be involved in anything wizarding. The boredom became a constant itch, dragging and terrible and lethal to anybody in the immediate vicinity. Anybody who spoke to him was snapped at, while Sherlock paced or acquired eyeballs only to lament a lack of microwave, all the while letting magic build under his fingers.

Everybody kept researching, testing, to find ways to keep Sherlock’s magic under control. None more so than Sherlock himself; he hated it, fostering a parallel hatred for the Ministry of Magic as a whole for damaging him to such a degree that the balance he had held for his whole life was shattered.

Consequently he decided – perhaps a little irrationally – that he hated both Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Arthur. They both worked in the Ministry, after all, and thus Sherlock construed it as them being enemies.

Arthur was devastated. He and John got on famously well, and Arthur had been dying to talk to Sherlock about what it was like to _live_ in the Muggle world; Sherlock simply looked at him with pure, callous disdain, and literally walked away.

Q walked into Black family portrait room, trying to find his errant siblings; Mycroft and Sherlock had spent breakfast speaking in low, angry voices, and curiosity had finally hit Q with such a vengeance that he couldn’t resist going to find them.

He never expected what he found.

Sherlock, holding a wand, with a breathtakingly sad expression.

It shut off the moment he saw the door open properly, the wand lowered abruptly and Sherlock’s expression turning belligerent and confrontational. “Oh,” he said, and relaxed a little. “You. How can I help?”

Q didn’t move for a moment, purely shocked. Mycroft lingered a few paces behind, his expression entirely neutral “What...?”

“Kindly close the door,” Mycroft suggested; Q obediently did so, taking a few steps further into the room. Sherlock didn’t look at him, returning his attention to the wand in his hands.

The three of them stood in perfect silence. “Is it yours?” Q asked; Mycroft glanced up, Sherlock ignoring the question altogether.

Sherlock had a wand, once. While their parents had failed, eventually, to get him to Hogwarts, they had managed to get him a wand. Ollivander had gone through most of the wands in the shop, despairing; they could sense a wizard who did not want, nor would use, a wand. They instinctively shied away from him.

Eventually, a stubborn and difficult wand – one Ollivander had failed to sell for years – seemed to take to Sherlock. A wand that would be quite content to remain in Mycroft Holmes’s custody for a number of years, unused, unwanted. Dragon heartstring, completely unyielding, thirteen inches, ebony.

A wand that now lingered in Sherlock’s elegant fingers, for the first time in well over a decade.

“I can’t control my magic,” Sherlock explained, in absolute monotone. “It needs to be channelled, I need to learn some form of control. Ergo, a wand. A vessel to channel and direct magic. My magic.”

Q stayed quiet a moment, trying to understand. Sherlock looked – in the quiet – like his world was shattering, and it was excruciating to see. He had grown into a man away from magic, had forged a life for himself without ever _needing_ to resort to magic. He had his work, his experiments, his blogger and a flat and a _life_.

Sherlock cast the wand to one side, letting it clatter with a sorry flail of sparks as he brushed out of the room, not speaking a word.

Mycroft sighed, and scooped the wand up. “I don’t know if he will ever be able to use it,” he said aloud, barely addressing Q, studying the wand with unusual melancholy. “I worry for him.”

There was nothing that could possibly be said, and so Q left, leaving Mycroft alone with a wand, and his ceaseless worries.

\---

As he had the previous year, Q decided it was best to head up to Hogwarts the day before students arrived. It gave him time to organise lessons, unpack, generally settle in and talk to the other teachers.

Mycroft, like Sherlock, was about three sentences away from being jinxed into oblivion.

“Have you got your books?” he asked, with a dash of true condescension. “I can...”

“Mycroft, you are _not_  our mother,” Q snapped, levitating books into his trunk and misaiming almost every single one. From the corner of the room, Molly surreptitiously lifted some of the items the few inches they had missed while Q wasn’t looking, meaning he looked back to find – to his mild surprise – that everything seemed to have landed in one place. Q glanced around to Molly with a pleading expression, oblivious to the help she had already given. “Could you?”

“Of course, dear,” she said happily. Q watched with quiet disbelief as she waved her wand in a businesslike series of movements, and somehow managed to make his trunk seem twice the size, everything stacked neatly inside. She even went one step further, moving the rest of Q’s items into the trunk, and completing it all with a flick to close said trunk.

Even Mycroft looked impressed.

“Thank you,” Q said weakly.

Molly just waved him off, striding towards the door; she was only back at Grimmauld Place to ensure the last bits and pieces were together before her brood headed back to school. Not to mention that she despised Fleur Delacour, to the extent that she spent as much time as possible in Grimmauld Place to avoid the girl, who was living in the Burrow with the eldest Weasley.

“I am assuming you intend to take the Knight Bus...?”

Q turned around, fixing Mycroft with the most lethal glare he could manage. “Go. Away,” he said firmly. “I am old enough to take care of this myself. Honestly. I really am. James can help me, _if_ I need anything. For Merlin’s sake, I’m the one who’s actually _taught_ at Hogwarts!”

Mycroft seemed entirely, irritatingly unperturbed. “If you require me, I will be downstairs. I believe Sherlock is attempting something unsanitary with potion ingredients and human eyeballs, and these days, Doctor Watson is not the tempering factor I had once hoped for,” he mused aloud. “Do be quick, I would prefer to get there before midday; I have to speak to Albus.”

On that note, Mycroft finally left.

Bond, who had been silently observing for the duration, finally spoke. “I give you a single month before you snap, and jinx him,” he teased; Q shook his head in slight disbelief, glancing to the door with vague annoyance.

“He’s going to be a nightmare,” he groused, opening the trunk to look, disbelievingly, at all of his contents in one place. He shut it again, turned to Bond. “I need to go, and I don’t want to,” he said flatly. “You’re coming, yes?”

“Obviously,” Bond agreed; Q had gainfully employed Bond to help him unpack, on the last day before term. Q could do everything he needed to in Hogwarts, with the understanding that Bond – unlike the previous year – was near enough free to come and go as he pleased. While Albus protected Hogwarts, he protected Q and Bond.

Q brushed the ring resting on his fourth finger, and smiled.

“ _Q_.”

“I’m going to _kill him_ ,” Q snapped with an aimless yell, and cast at his door; another damned spasm, another slammed door which rattled hinges, and even managed to wake up Mrs Black downstairs.

Bond laughed, moving to his partner, winding his hands around his waist, pulling him in. “Calm,” he advised, making Q sigh slightly. “He’s a pain in the arse, but mostly benevolent.”

Q nodded, growling slightly under his breath just because he could. Bond kissed it away, before levitating Q’s trunk. “Come on,” he coaxed, and led Q out.

There were limited amounts to be gained with a large goodbye; unlike the students, Q had every intention of being in Grimmauld Place as many weekends as feasibly possible. If not, Bond would be at Hogwarts, to fill him in on the movements and world outside the relative microcosm of Hogwarts.

As it was, rumour was flying. Since their wedding, Dumbledore had not been seen; the Order had their own missions and ventures, but Dumbledore himself seemed preoccupied with something quite entirely separate.

Apparently, he had also been injured. Nobody knew the details, but it was the subject of most conversation immediately prior to the start of term.

Q placed such thoughts at the back of his mind for a while, trekking downstairs to at least wave vaguely in Sherlock’s direction, and collect potions from John.

The latter looked up, gave Q a weak and slightly pained smile, and went back to a large tome on _Beginner’s Arithmancy_ with what looked like near-suicidal despair. Sherlock, meanwhile, seemed the happiest Q had seen him in what felt like forever; he hugged Q of his own volition, an event of such rarity Q was literally rendered speechless, before wishing him luck at Hogwarts.

Feeling faintly unnerved, and wondering if John had slipped him a Euphoria Elixir, Q headed out of Grimmauld Place. Bond was waiting; Mycroft had mercifully left without them, so Q simply kissed Bond quickly, and turned to disappear.

Hogwarts was near empty, which Q found a surreal experience; he had last year too, seeing the skeleton castle, without even the students who stayed over the holidays. Q headed through the halls; his bags were supposedly already waiting in the room having been brought over by House Elves.

“Welcome back, dears,” Beth said happily; the motherly portrait who guarded what had once been Q and Bond’s shared quarters, now only Q’s, seemed absolutely delighted to see them both. “James, it’s been a while. I hope you’ve been looking after this one.”

Q tried valiantly hard not to blush, mostly failed, and ducked through the portrait hole while Bond told an absolutely _bereft_ Beth that he wasn’t staying to teach. She could still be heard bewailing Bond’s absence as the portrait swung shut once again.

The room was lovely; Q would always harbour fond thoughts of the lamentably short time he had spent here, with Bond. Whisp and Scamander too, at least to start off with; Scamander was now a working owl for the Order, and Whisp – his Metamorphmagus cat – had become so attached to Tonks that she bluntly refused to leave Grimmauld Place. Q had conceded defeat after a certain point.

Bond, thankfully, took over the unpacking. Given Q’s blanket inability to get anything into the trunk, and Molly’s magic, he was slightly concerned about setting off a nuclear explosion of socks through the room.

Everything reached some sense of order, Q’s belongings mostly in places he would be able to relocate. “Thank you,” he said softly, glancing up at Bond. “Well. I can probably only keep you here so long, I suppose. Do you have business?”

“Some,” Bond admitted; he had put several more pressing assignments to one side, for the purposes of looking after Q as he returned to Hogwarts. “I’m staying tonight, Albus gave permission – I haven’t seen Aurora since the wedding, and I got word of the new Potions Master…”

“Who?” Q said curiously, excited. “I haven’t heard a word, even Mycroft didn’t know…”

Bond just grinned. “You’ll like him. Well – actually, he’ll like you, quite a lot. You’re a mystery, and you’re married to me.”

Q’s eyes narrowed a little, relaxing as Bond extended an open palm. “Come with me, Mr Bond, and I’ll introduce you.”

There was no point in hiding the rather teenage grin at being called Mr Bond; they laughed almost in unison, making giggling and absurd jokes about names and themselves and teachers, and took a suspended evening and made it last, showing off to the teachers who hadn’t been at the wedding while Snape’s expression remained bleakly disgusted.

Albus’s hand was withered, blackened. Q took one look at it, and his breath caught in his throat; it looked dead, somehow. In all the research Q had ever done into magic, he had never heard of anything that could wither, could _kill_ a human hand. His _wand_ hand.

Q made several mental notes to ask Bond about it. James tended to know more; Q, for all his qualities, was not as integral to the Order as Bond had become. As such, Bond knew far more about the rumours and ideas and facts that whipped around the Order. Q’s very own informer.

The Feast wrapped up early, teachers getting ready for the next day. To Q and Bond’s parallel disappointment, the new Potion’s master – Horace Slughorn – was taking the train up to Hogwarts the next day, rather than being present for the teacher’s feast.

Bond made Q solemnly promise to tell him _everything_ about meeting Slughorn. Inevitably, Q began to get rather suspicious of what in the hell Slughorn was like, that Bond was quite _so_ invested in his reaction.

In any case, the evening was predictably excellent. Q wound up in a multi-person debate about the ethics of human transfiguration for the purposes of aesthetic amendments; Charity Burbage, a lovely witch Q had barely encountered the previous year, interjected with some intriguing points about Muggle habits of plastic surgery.

The debate raged throughout dinner; Q even demonstrated an illusory spell on Bond at one point, making his skin turn purple. Minerva argued about the effects of human transfiguration on impressionable teenager witches and wizards – an argument thoroughly backed by Q – while Bond and Filius maintained that when taught responsibly, human transfiguration could be a tremendous asset to those who believed their physical bodies were less than ideal.

Naturally, no conclusion was reached. Several of them were relatively drunk on Firewhiskey, which definitely didn’t help.

Bond eventually extricated Q from the Great Hall, the pair heading towards their quarters – and Q would always consider it _their_ quarters, not just his – and fell into bed, worshipping one another’s forms reverentially, speed and heat and blinding intensity, sleeping entwined in each other until the sun rose.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy!!

Bond Disapparated first thing in the morning, and Q prepared for the Feast. Last year had been horrible, with Q’s propensity for blushing and general dislike of being in front of large numbers of hormonal teens and adolescents, but this year promised to be easier. The students knew him, he knew them, had no problems hauling any and all into detentions if they made his life unpleasant.

The power-hungry psychopath in him also rather like being able to wantonly add or deduct House Points at a moment’s notice, just to watch the gems move up and down at his own whim. He only did that once or twice, though.

Q spent most of the day generally organising his possessions, reading, preparing. He had forever been an introvert, and saw no real reason to seek out others when he was quite happy to linger on his own for a day, buried in magic and words.

Of course, he then headed down to meet and greet just before the Feast kicked off, and in doing so, Q was introduced to Horace Slughorn.

It was very obvious, very quickly, that Q was not going to have very much patience for the man.

He was rotund and patronising and quietly arrogant, in an almost unassuming way that made it all the worse. Bond was a point of interest due to his days in the Ministry, and Q simply because Slughorn had no idea who he was, and wanted to know. Not to _mention, dear boy_ , that they had the daring to be two men together in the current _political climate, you understand, it’s not something I personally find very novel but, you know how it is_.

It was rare for Q to get very angry, relatively rare for him to ferociously dislike another human being after only a handful of minutes.

Slughorn was, apparently, a definite exception.

To Q’s relief, Mycroft detested the man too; just as Q was beginning to reach true levels of homicide, unable to extricate himself, his brother intervened. “My apologies, Horace, I need to steal Q,” he said simply.

“Mycroft, Merlin’s beard, how are you…”

Before Slughorn could utter a further syllable or try for an actual conversation, Mycroft had firmly guided his brother and himself out of harm’s way.

Mercifully, Slughorn didn’t know that Mycroft and Q were related. If he had, Q would probably have never broken free; not only was he interesting to start off him, but he was the youngest member of a truly legendary wizarding family.

“He is…” Q began, almost _hissing_ with suppressed dislike. “… why in Merlin’s name is he _hired_? He’s _staying_? Fuck, just… horrible man.”

Mycroft smiled slightly, a quirk. “He is harmless,” he said, tone gently placatory. “He collects people of interest, for the purposes of conversation and social climbing; he likes to foster minds, and claim influence when they reach inevitable brilliance. He has been reclusive recently, since the resurgence of Dark magics.”

Q nodded, shooting him occasional glances, trying not to look too hateful. “I’m avoiding him, as of now,” he said, in a low growl.

“I owe Bond a sickle; even I didn’t anticipate the true virulence of your response,” Mycroft noted, with deep amusement; Q shot him a black look, and strode towards the Great Hall with as much decorum as he could muster.

Albus was already at the head of the table, deep in what seemed to be a serious conversation with Filius; they both straightened when they saw Q, and Albus smiled in his usual way as he invited Q to join them. A discussion of theories on the year to come, on Ravenclaw House too; Flitwick had been Q’s Head of House, a staple of his life as a Ravenclaw.

Playful teasing over the Houses was inevitable; everybody cherished their Houses for their entire lives, would occasionally identify themselves by their Houses even when deep into their adult lives. Friendships, allegiances, distrusts, were born of something seen in their minds when they were barely eleven.

The Hogwarts Express pulled in, and the teachers sobered, ready for the new intakes. The flood of older students arrived first; Q spotted students he knew and cared a great deal for, the Order children, Luna Lovegood in all her eccentric glory. She grinned dreamily, looking to Q’s hand and back up again; Q gratefully noticed that she, like all the students, seemed to have suffered no long-term damage from the events at the Ministry.

Which reminded him; Q tugged out a hipflask, taking a quick swallow to alleviate the pressure in his chest. The Sorting was predictably good fun, students happily heading to their respective tables to be divided from their peers. Q couldn’t help but feel a slight shadow of distrust for the whole event, but covered it easily enough.

The Feast was a chaos of conversation, food, jokes and students jibing. It was split a little by Harry Potter managed to walk with blood coating his face, Snape waiting with an expression of sheer joy by the door. He hid it quickly, but not before Q raised an eyebrow at his childishness.

Dumbledore’s speech was definitely interesting; the student reaction to the new teaching shuffle was varied and pronounced, with several dozen eyes landing on Q. Everybody had assumed Bond would be back, given that Umbridge was finally gone, and seemed remarkably upset at his continued absence.

Meanwhile, Mycroft received a passionate standing ovation from anybody who knew anything about him – Q restrained laughter with difficulty – as he was announced History of Magic professor. McGonagall was back to Transfiguration, which was met with mixed reviews from those who had been fond of Q, and everybody in the building who liked Arithmancy were _beyond_ delighted that Silva had been replaced by Q.

Everybody filed out with truly incredible levels of noise. Potter shot Q a quick look, uncomfortable and troubled, relatively unsubtle in his continued glances to Draco Malfoy.

Q sighed to himself. There was little to be done for the boy, with matters as they were. Potter refused to relent, and Draco was heavily under the thumb of his family – and quite frankly, looked terrible. He had the pinched, sallow look of somebody who had slept too little and seen too much.

There was little time to dwell on the thought. Minerva collared him, asking what grades he would accept for NEWT level Arithmancy; Q shrugged. He was honestly happy with E’s and above, but if anybody expressed particular interest, he would consider students who had passed. Arithmancy was not precisely an over-subscribed subject at NEWT level. Q could afford the time to students who might struggle a little.

Tomorrow, he would discover who else he had across the various years. Arithmancy was elective from such an early stage that it was more than possible that he could have OWL classes with minimal students.

Textbooks, notes, ideas lay sprawled across his desk. At least – he thought, with no small degree of satisfaction – he would have Hermione Granger in his class. It was relatively well known that she adored Arithmancy, and also happened to be excellent at it, from everything he had heard from teachers. Silva included, come to that.

Q ignored every last one of them, and collapsed onto the bed, head ringing with the infinite voices of students and the hum of excitement for a new year.

-

Q woke up with an exaggerated groan of sheer loathing for most of the world at large, especially whatever git had invented mornings. Every time, he woke up just wanting to commit mass homicide; Bond had the ridiculous ability to wake up and be _energetic_ , obnoxiously so.

The tapping wouldn’t stop; Q lifted his head, blurrily seeing Myrmidon outside the window with a letter tightly clasped in his beak. Q grappled for his glasses and wand, in that order, waving the wand at the window to let his owl in.

Myrmidon cooed happily, nuzzling into Q’s forearm and flirting outrageously with Scamander when the latter appeared from his night out hunting. Q Summoned some owl treats, feeding Myrmidon – and occasionally a rather cheeky Scamander – out of the palm of his hand while he read through.

_Good luck today. Try not to jinx any students, it isn’t usually considered a good thing. I love you. James._

Q grinned, and looked over at his watch.

A heartbeat later, he was trying to extricate himself from his bed with difficulty; apparently, it was ten past eight. Which meant he was running late; he needed a shower, would like to get some breakfast before heading into a nine o’clock of stressed OWL-year students who would immediately bombard him with their various exam-related worries.

Q whined slightly, tumbling out of bed with the sheet caught around his foot, half-tripping, swearing under his breath with Wizard and Muggle curses alike before falling into the shower.

Overall, it was a lot less _fun_ without Bond.

Although it had to be said, he was definitely cleaner at the end of it.

When he emerged, towel around his waist, it took all of his control to not yelp in shock at the sight of Dobby on his bed. “Professor Q is running late,” Dobby said, rocking back on his heels, looking immensely proud of himself as he gestured to a tray of toast, eggs, bacon, porridge; far more than Q probably should have eaten solo, but he couldn’t really profess to minding.

“Dobby, you’re _amazing_ ,” Q told him, with more gratitude than he knew possible. “If I can ever return the favour…”

Predictably, Dobby refused to hear it; Q just kept pouring thanks on him instead, as he collapsed onto his bed in his towel and attacked the bacon with true joy. “Dobby would like to say: Professor Bond and Professor Q should be happy always. Dobby congratulates you.”

Q grinned. “Thank you,” he said, one final time, through a mouthful of sausage.

Dobby winked, and Disapparated with a loud _crack_.

In a few minutes, Q had eaten everything barring the marmite, which he loathed on principle. He left the tray on the bed, digging out his robes and getting dressed quickly. He gathered together various papers into a briefcase with an Extendable Charm, snapping it shut and breezing out of his rooms. “Good luck!” Beth trilled behind him.

Q waved absentmindedly in her direction, moving quickly. He needed to set up the classroom a little, preferably, and hopefully have time to make himself some tea in his office.

The fifth-years all filed in; Luna Lovegood was one of his for Arithmancy, a surprisingly logic-based subject for a dreamy type like Luna. Ginny Weasley was also there, having rejected Divination on the grounds of it being a damn stupid subject, and the confusion over teachers the previous year.

Along with them, a handful of other students from across the fifth year had turned up. Predictable, the Ravenclaws were far more panicked than anybody else; the Gryffindors baited the Slytherins and vice versa, and the Hufflepuffs worked diligently and quietly on their own terms. Q adored Hufflepuffs for that.

“Boys and girls, welcome to a new year,” he called, stilling the swell of noise. “You’ve all met me before, so please refrain from absurdities in this class. Anything from the Weasley clan, for example,” Q raised an eyebrow at Ginny, who smirked, “has a blanket ban. If I catch you, you will be in detention from now until next Christmas…”

-

Q collapsed sideways into his chair at dinner, next to Mycroft. “Good day?” he asked, reaching for the dish of roast potatoes with a pathetic degree of joy.

Mycroft sighed, plate piled with a modest collection of sliced beef and vegetables; another diet, Q theorised, shaking his head slightly. “Altogether successful. I believe Minerva’s brief stint in the role was useful in garnering support for the subject; Professor Binns was singularly uninspiring, by all accounts. I have an amusingly small seventh-year NEWT class, while Minerva’s influence has led to an unusually large assortment for the sixth-years. And yourself?”

Q grinned; he had an average-size new NEWT class, about ten altogether. A fair number for Arithmancy. His seventh-year class had seven, which was a little disappointing, but not horrendous.

“Brilliant,” he admitted, spearing beef onto his place and eating it with minimal elegance. “I love Arithmancy, I really do. Brilliant students – they’ve all elected to do it, and actually _want_ to be there, they’re mostly pretty good at it, and I love it…”

Minerva sat down next to him lightly, smiling, interrupting his little rant. “Don’t inform the Transfiguration students that you will never be returning – you have quite a following,” she burred, making Q curse his capillaries once again as he blushed. “My return was not quite the celebration I had hoped.”

“You’re a better Transfiguration teacher than me,” Q told her honestly, shrugging. “You taught me – anything I know is your fault, and I know I don’t know as much as you on the subject. So really…”

Mycroft sighed. “Ever self-deprecating,” he said simply, polishing off his green beans with a look of mild distaste. “Well. I have matters to attend to; a pleasure as always Q, Minerva.”

Q shook his head slightly at Mycroft’s pretentions, and bid him goodbye.

Once again, his attention fell on Draco Malfoy. He sat at the Slytherin table with his compatriots, but oddly faded as compared to the previous year. The arrogance had faded back a little, replaced by a troubled quirk, a shadow in his expression. “Severus is speaking to him,” Minerva murmured, following Q’s gaze.

He looked away quickly, a little ashamed at having been caught. “Sorry, it’s just…”

“I agree,” Minerva said simply, lips pursing to a tight line. “A boy like that needs protection. I don’t think he has it.”

At that moment, Hagrid intervened; he clapped Q on the back, congratulating him again on his marriage. Q took that as his cue to run away, very fast, before the entire Hall’s attention became focused on him.

It transpired that Hagrid was not the only interested party; several students enquired, one even asking if he would prefer to be called Professor Bond, or if that was too confusing. The mere concept of being called _Professor Bond_ made Q’s head spin a little, thus he promptly informed his class that he was, quite definitely, remaining Q.

The week passed on that theme; the novelty mercifully wore off after a point, and the students settled into a work routine. An unexpected side-effect of changing subjects to Arithmancy was the drastic reduction in Q’s marking and general work load: Transfiguration was compulsory to OWL-level, and Arithmancy had vastly fewer students as a result.

Q found himself with the unaccustomed sensation of _free time_.

Thus freed, he found himself practising wandwork, duelling, in the quiet of his room; he cleared anything valuable to one end of the room, and practised aim, speed, consistently until he grew bored.

The first weekend of term was generally subsumed with feasts and general school maintenance; students flitted to teachers in states of stress, Quidditch practises were scheduled, clubs rallied for more members, and a good fifth of the student body were incarcerated in detention given the general trend of upper years thinking they were old enough to either take the piss, or jinx younger students.

It was busy, but manageable – Q spent his time delving through Arithmancy, wondering if eventually, he would go off on sabbatical himself and create some groundbreaking new formulae to predict events more accurately. Perhaps incorporating the theories behind Divination; Q had the psychic abilities of a slug, but the technical theories were potentially useful to apply.

Halfway through the second week, with piles of papers stacked neatly on his desk, Q found himself working with the innards of a mobile phone John had given him the previous Christmas, with the early sparks of an idea.

John had given the phone, and neither he nor Q had anticipated that Muggle communication devices did not work within Hogwarts. Magical distortion, mostly.

Mind buried in Arithmancy, in numbers and ideas, Q began to wonder if it would be possible to force Muggle communication devices to work _through_ the distortion. Leading on from that, to make them impervious to Wizarding surveillance, so they could potentially be used by the Order; Voldemort’s forces would never condescend to Muggle means, and it was unlikely that the Ministry would either.

Dismembered phone scattered across the table, Q attempted a couple of small-scale spells on the different component parts, holding his wand between his teeth briefly as he fitted pieces together with tweezers.

He slotted the phone back into one cohesive unit, and switched it on.

It smoked ominously, but lit up regardless; Q glanced closer at it, and noticed a single bar of signal. “Ha,” he said happily, a heartbeat before the entire bloody thing exploded in a dramatic puff of smoke and miniscule pieces of once-mobile-phone shrapnel.

“I need a Nokia,” Q mumbled to himself, and grabbed some parchment to tell John, via Bond, that he needed a collection of mobile phones to experiment on.

\---

That weekend, Q headed out to the Hogwarts gates, through piles of autumn leaves, gold and red and crisp; Q firmly believed Hogwarts possessed a type of magic that prevented too-horrible weather, to preserve the perpetual sense of it being a safe microcosm, somehow removed from the horrors of the outside world.

Dumbledore had extended some protective spells out a few feet from the gate, with the ability to Apparate into a given perimeter if one was recognised within the parameters of the spell; a fiddly notion that only Dumbledore seemed capable of managing. Q strongly suspected the man had somehow created the spell himself.

He Apparated onto the doorstep of Grimmauld Place due to paranoia, stepping inside to the chaos of Mrs Black’s screams; he cast an irritable spell, the curtains shutting on her.

Everybody usually congregated in the kitchen, so Q tapped on the door and walked in. “Hello,” he said happily to everyone; John was settled at the table with a pile of books and endless sheets of paper, a cauldron bubbling lethargically behind him. Molly was cooking something, the scent mingling with the potion, an intoxicating combination that was categorised as _home_ in Q’s mind.

There was another presence at the table, somebody Q didn’t recognise; a woman, oozing sexuality, dark hair tumbling down her back, eyes bright, a _come hither_ type of expression that was fixed – to Q’s instant tension – at Bond.

Of course, Bond stood the moment he saw who had entered the room. The woman sat back a little, exuding a delicate scent herself, beautiful beyond understanding or perspective; she wore a dress that clung to her, waist and hips and breasts, and Q – who had realised his predisposition to men the moment puberty attacked – found his mouth going inadvertently dry.

Veela. She had to be.

Bond followed Q’s gaze curiously, before smirking. “Q, meet Irene Adler.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you can see: book six may be slow, but my god, that isn't going to stop me throwing spanners in works absolutely everywhere.
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Thoughts and responses and general everything are eternally appreciated. <3 Jen.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween, ladies and gents!! Hope you enjoy. Jen.

Q hated her.

In all fairness, he didn’t hate _her_ , per se. She was intelligent enough, clearly useful in the Order; she had appeared at Dumbledore’s behest. Technically a Squib; she had some quirks of Veela blood – a mostly-Veela brought up in a Wizarding household – but was otherwise unable to do any spellwork whatsoever.

The problem was that she was terrifyingly, breathtakingly, _painfully_ beautiful.

The problem was that Q, who had been gay his entire life, was in no way susceptible to her charms (although conceded the aesthetic beauty of the woman).

The _bloody_ problem was that James Bond, his _husband_ , was bisexual and _very much_ susceptible to _every single one_ of her charms.

Thus, Q hated her. He hated her face and hair and body. He hated that Irene batted her eyelashes at Bond, and his damned husband seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that she was _transparently_ flirting. She leaned in, brushing his skin, hair falling gently around her face, body swaying eloquently and laughing in a low and utterly sensual tone, and Q’s fingers twitched towards his wand unapologetically.

Rather than cursing her – tempting though it was – Q found himself possessively remaining by Bond’s elbow, with a touch of tension in his posture and expression, trying valiantly hard not to outright glare at Irene. Bond smiled benevolently, hooking an arm around Q’s waist in a way that just about endeared him enough to prevent mass murder.

John’s gaze kept flicking upwards, but he didn’t seem overly bothered by Irene’s charms either; he simply smirked intermittently at Q, which did nothing for his temper.

Bond was utterly oblivious.

Sherlock ambled in at one stage, speaking ten to the dozen at John the moment he entered; he glanced at Q, Bond and Irene, and actually paused in his otherwise unstoppable ranting to let out an openly derisive snort. Really, that summed up the entire situation.

Eventually, Bond ran out of conversation and drooling to direct and exchange with Irene; he turned away from her entirely, leaning down to kiss Q, a quiet apology for not giving him his full attention. By that stage, Q’s fingers were digging into Bond’s bicep with enough force to leave mild bruises.

Irene smiled obnoxiously, and Q restrained the childish urge to stick his tongue out at her.

John was finally allowed an in on the conversation around the rest of the room; Sherlock was impervious to anything anybody else said, far too preoccupied with his newfound studies. Q ignored the bloodstains around Sherlock’s fingernails, given that Q had known Sherlock to be covered in far more questionable substances than blood.

And anyway, the man was still very faintly glowing.

Q also noticed, a little while later, that Sherlock was just as weak in front of Irene Adler as Bond was; it was unnoticeable to anybody but Q, who knew Sherlock too well to miss it. His gaze flickered upwards intermittently, too frequently for Sherlock, who was still talking incessantly about his new experiments and yet managed to keep staring at the new arrival.

“You need mobiles?” John asked at one stage; Q nodded, and was handed an entire bag full of phones. John explained that Remus had blitzed a company that recycled mobiles, and brought back _dozens_. Q decided not to debate the morality of that particular move, and just accepted the bag with a mumbled thanks.

Q, bag in hand, turned on Irene with a saccharine smile. “So. What brings you into the Order in the first place?” Q asked, with forced politeness that he suspected Irene could see straight through.

Sherlock had given up even pretending that he wasn’t staring. John looked pretty much how Q felt, only was still suffering from a more than passing interest in Irene herself. The entire situation was damn well _absurd_.

Irene smiled in a way that made Q feel actively homicidal. “My parents were both connected to the original Order,” she purred, lips pouting out slightly and oh _Merlin_ , Q wanted to punch her. “I knew Dumbledore from my childhood, and my heritage is occasionally very useful in – shall we say – extracting information?”

“I’m assuming part-Veela?” Q enquired.

An elegant nod. “Three-quarters; my mother was a full Veela, and my father was half-Veela,” she explained; Q felt slightly more sympathy towards the other males. “Many are rendered rather… weak, under the influence of my abilities.”

Q’s smile remained worryingly fixed. “Yes, I can imagine,” he said, a little stiffly. “Excuse me.”

He headed over to Molly, who seemed to be creating a chilli of some description. He looked at her, raised an eyebrow; she gave him a tight-lipped look that more than adequately mirrored his own, and Q felt an impromptu allegiance with Molly Weasley against the worrying effects of anybody with Veela traits.

Mercifully, Irene left after a couple of hours. Apparently, she functioned and worked in the Muggle world; Q felt honest sympathy towards any unfortunates who happened to cross her, especially Muggles, who simply wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. She was literally a lethal weapon.

The men all calmed a little once she had left; Sherlock’s general speed of speech increased tenfold, before he abruptly disappeared back to continue whatever experiments he had been conducting. Bond kept his arms hooked around Q, pressing their bodies together as Q leant forward, looking over John’s recent Arithmancy work.

Q gave some constructive comments, before settling down to a gargantuan portion of chilli; Molly had never quite passed the stage of needing to feed up anybody she encountered who was skinny and dark-haired. She tried to feed up Sherlock, but was met with general contempt, and occasional deficits of key ingredients when she least expected it.

John also supplied Q with another month’s worth of potions; the pain was receding gradually, but the spasms in his wand hand had yet to leave. Dumbledore had also removed him from the night patrol rota on the grounds that he still couldn’t walk long distances without his chest contracting in on itself.

It was healing, however, and Q quietly hoped it would continue on an improving trend for a while yet.

It was overall a pleasant evening; he and Bond retired back to their room, swapped stories, and Q prepared to return to Hogwarts first thing in the morning. He had detentions to monitor starting Sunday morning, not to mention he wanted to have a look at the new Quidditch teams for the term.

After that, Q didn’t get back to Grimmauld Place for another three weeks; he found himself increasingly occupied with Arithmancy, casting perverse spells on mobiles in his spare time, and dealing with the chaos that erupted after Katie Bell was cursed.

Q didn’t end up getting involved overmuch. All the staff were humming with information, ideas, theories; it seemed that Katie had been under the Imperius curse, and accidently brushed a cursed necklace. She would be in the hospital wing for a protracted period of time, but was just about medically stable.

Nobody liked it. It was an open attack on students, which meant the staff were placed on high alert for anything further.

Then – out of nowhere – a note arrived from an enthusiastic second-year.

_To my dear Q Bond,_

_I would be delighted if you could join me for a touch of supper on Friday evening? Do let me know._

_Yours,  
Horace Slughorn._

Q read it through, blinked. Nobody other than Mrs Weasley and Silva had ever called him ‘dear’, and he honestly had no idea why Slughorn would want him for dinner. To be honest, the intrigue was enough to tell the afore-mentioned second year that he should tell Slughorn that his answer was yes.

Still pondering, Q wended his way to the staff room. As in the previous year, he didn’t often frequent the Great Hall for meals, preferring his moments of solitude; he liked the staff room from time to time, though. Due to lessons and other commitments, it tended to only hold a handful of teachers at any one time.

This time, there were Mycroft, Minerva and Filius. A perfect collection.

Mycroft inclined his head, his usual aura of faint condescension perfectly in place. “I take it you too have been invited to Horace’s little meeting?” he asked, with a tone that implied he was less than delighted. “He does have a habit of acquiring, or at least exploring, curiosities.”

Q blinked, feeling like he had somehow missed a step in the conversation. “What?” he asked simply, not bothering to pretend he had followed.

“Horace spent his years at Hogwarts cherry-picking students he felt had great aptitude,” Minerva explained, lips slightly pursed. “He is an archetypical social climber; those with high-end relatives, or the possibility of greatness themselves, become a part of his collection.”

It almost made sense; Mycroft was one of the most influential wizards of the era – or at least, he had been – and was exceptionally talented to boot. He sounded like Slughorn’s ideal target.

“Why me, then?” Q asked, still barely keeping up.

Mycroft raised an eyebrow. “A teacher with no name, known Order connections, a questionable history with your predecessor in Arithmancy, recent serious injury, and married to another man,” he rattled off.

When put like that, it made a lot more sense.

“So, I’m supposed to meet up with him to, what? Talk about nothing in particular?” Q asked rhetorically; he was hardly likely to discuss any of the above with a man he barely knew. “That sounds ridiculous.”

Mycroft, quite obviously, agreed. “I believe we should show willing,” he sighed, looking extremely put-upon. “However, if he is too obnoxious, I assure you I will decline anything further. I believe he will also invite students to this meeting, so do be warned.”

Q rolled his eyes, heaving a sigh. Minerva and Filius gave the pair of them sympathetic looks. “At least he doesn’t know the obvious,” Q pointed out to Mycroft; he didn’t dare breathe openly about his relation to Mycroft, even in the ostensibly safe space of the staff room.

Mycroft nodded. “I fear you would never escape, were that the case,” he said, with a shadow of humour. “In any case; I understand Miss Granger has been excelling in your recent classes…”

-

Friday seemed like a potential imminent execution; Q prepared for an evening of wearisome avoidance of many conversational topics, had dressed in half-decent robes that he dug out from a back drawer, and prayed there would be some excuse for him to leave early.

He arrived in literal tandem with Mycroft. Q was subjected to a critical once-over, and apparently passed, given Mycroft’s small nod of almost-approval. “Shall we?” he asked, and swept through the door without waiting for an answer.

There were mostly students; McLaggen, a hulking Gryffindor, smirked with self-satisfaction as he surveyed the room. Zabini, a rather repulsive Slytherin who was unpleasant but benign. Bobbin, a third-year who had been a favourite in Q’s Defence Against the Dark Arts classes. Granger, and the female Weasley, both of whom looked spectacularly uncomfortable with the entire affair.

Q took a seat next to Mycroft, at the head of the table by Slughorn. “A pleasure to have you both here,” he said brightly, food adorning every inch of the table; the students were already eating, the potatoes an apparent favourite. Q shrugged, reaching for various bits of chicken leg and bread with merry abandon. “So, Q…”

And so it began.

Most questions were avoidable, and the rest were just pointless. Q had great fun watching Mycroft get increasingly, visibly irritated for one of the very few times in Q’s memory; he avoided the questions, insulted Horace outright a couple of times, and tried very hard not to cause physical harm.

Q found it absolutely hilarious. It was the highlight of the entire evening as far as he was concerned, barring the truly excellent caramel ice cream at the end.

He escaped back to his room at about half ten, after coffee – or tea, in his case – and spent a couple of minutes walking back to his rooms with Mycroft, simply to bait him. Mycroft remained admirably in control. “I will hex you unless you desist,” he said sharply, making Q snort outright.

“I am so telling him,” he teased, ‘him’ referring to Sherlock; he would _revel_ in the thought of anybody winding Mycroft up to that extent.

Mycroft just grimaced; he knew Sherlock would a nightmare too. “Go to sleep, or I’ll find ways to make sure you’re busy for the entire weekend,” he said primly, a rather unfair jab at Q’s moments of freedom to return to Grimmauld Place.

As it happened, sheer misfortune kept Q away from Grimmauld Place at the weekend; he found himself buried in marking, and lesson plans for the impending week. His NEWT students were becoming worryingly complacent, and he was also being asked to monitor some of the Apparation lessons that the older years were supposed to be starting. He needed the sleep, not to mention he needed to be up at eight on the Sunday for a staff meeting.

By the end of the weekend, he was far more exhausted than when he had started.

The week was relatively easy after that point, mercifully enough. Friday brought with it the opening match of the Quidditch season, between Gryffindor and Slytherin; with Katie Bell still in hospital, the Gryffindors had rapidly reformed, and were more than prepared to take out Slytherin.

Q attended for Bond’s sake; he had promised to report back on the match, which Bond naturally hoped would culminate in a Gryffindor win. Q also wanted to be on site, so he could gloat at Mycroft if the Slytherins were beaten.

Of course, it was also a nice chance to simply socialise. Minerva was there to support the Gryffindors, while most other teachers turned up to see how the teams were set for the rest of the tournament. Slughorn was mercifully occupied elsewhere – Mycroft looked particularly relieved on that front – and Snape kept to himself, as was his habit.

The various teachers spent a while simply chatting, while the teams bickered amongst themselves and Madam Hooch released the balls.

Over the previous year, Q had grown rather fond of Quidditch; it was good game, and an absolute staple of Wizarding life. He settled back, gratefully receiving a tea from Minerva – she had just about learned how to make passable tea – and watching as the teams took to the air.

Curiously, Draco Malfoy – known to be the Slytherin Seeker – was absent. Another Slytherin Beater was also absent; the team was obviously depleted, and were hardly playing their best. Ron Weasley, meanwhile, was on unusually excellent form, and there seemed to be an entirely understandable hatred of the new commentator. Lee Jordan, who had been a massive favourite for years, had been replaced by Zacharias Smith.

He was a vitriolic little git, and watching a Bludger sail in his direction was distinctly satisfactory.

An hour later, Minerva was gloating over a Gryffindor victory, and Q’s heart had plummeted to his chest.

Potter, after his brief affair with Draco Malfoy, had landed on the pitch to sweep Ginny Weasley into a deep, searing kiss.

Dean Thomas looked homicidal, but that was hardly the salient point.

It was public, open, and intentionally proving a point: he was heterosexual, he had no interest in anybody other than who was expected of him. She was the right type of choice; feisty, intelligent, more than a match for Potter’s fame and volcanic personality. “That’s a pity,” Mycroft said quietly from behind.

Q closed his eyes a moment, tired, and genuinely upset. He could still remember Potter’s words, the claim that he really _cared_ about Malfoy, wanted to start something and potentially keep it.

After a year from hell, just when Malfoy was losing everything, and Potter had taken away the last chance at an escape. It was cruel, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps just the act of a desperate teenager who was too frightened and too hurt to care about the fallout.

Q debated having another word with him, talking about what in the _hell_ Potter thought he was doing, leading on a girl who deserved better, and causing potential pain for another.

It was an untenable situation.

Those at the Order agreed; Potter had far too much to handle, without dealing with the inevitable chaos that would be inspired by a relationship with a boy, the child of an imprisoned Death Eater. Not to mention that Malfoy was dealing with the loss of his father, and potentially pressure from You-Know-Who himself.

Bond nevertheless had sympathy; Q had invested a fair amount of emotional energy in Potter and Malfoy, had cared very deeply about their fledging relationship. Absurd, perhaps, but optimism was something far too few people seemed to invest in these days.

The school hummed with the stories of Potter’s new love interest, to the delight of all but the teachers who knew, and Potter’s closest friends. Granger went far enough to give Q a sad shrug at one stage, a quiet communication that seemed prevalent among many close Order members these days.

Q just continued trekking through the days, watching from a distance, and wondering when – or if – the final shoe would fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts and feelings are welcome, if you the time and/or inclination. <3 Jen.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which paranoia strikes, and no relationships are without problems...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shit's going down, ladies and gents. Finally, it's picking up speed.  
> Hope you all enjoy! Jen

Q naturally returned to Grimmauld Place again, mostly to supply Sherlock with the stories about the Slug Club. Bond found it hilarious, and Sherlock was all but _crowing_ with joy over the entire affair; he immediately rattled off a letter to Mycroft just to bait him, something Q tried to object to but found he just didn’t have the energy. It was simply too funny.

Christmas was approaching rapidly, Q’s favourite time of year, and a chance to happily celebrate with his husband and extended family: the entire Order had become family now, even the kids. Unexpectedly, in the light of the previous horrendous year and subsequent wedding, all the different members of the Order knew and cared deeply for one another.

Hence the entirety of Grimmauld Place had started conspiring to finally get Remus and Tonks together. It was transparently obvious – and had been since the previous year – that the pair did care for one another, in a strange and disjointed manner.

Molly was the only person who remained unsupportive of the plot, given her fervent attempts to match her erstwhile son with almost _anybody_ other than Fleur Delacour. The intrusion of Irene Adler had definitely not improved her opinion of Veela, or Veela descendants.

Remus remained blithely oblivious, and Tonks spent many evenings dejectedly sat at the table, talking to anybody who was there. Molly was supportive, but not quite impassive, while Bond and Q were too happy together for Tonks to enjoy being around them.

Ultimately, John managed to be the only person Tonks could truly talk to. He or Molly were often lingering in the kitchen; Molly cooked at seemingly all hours of the day and night, and John remained with his books and cauldrons and immersion in the Wizarding world. Even after a year, the novelty had not quite worn off. Sherlock was busy an indescribable amount of the time with his ‘work’, and thus John filled the void.

After talking to John, Tonks occasionally even managed to change her hair colour to something slightly more optimistic than a depressing, dishwasher blonde. It was a world away from her bubblegum pinks and fluorescent oranges, but it the light shade of brown was the most colour anybody had seen from her in weeks.

“I finally got it out of her,” John said with a sigh, when Q arrived at Grimmauld Place for another weekend. Bond would be out until the evening, allowing Q some time to see his brother – supposedly – and generally catch up on Order gossip. Given their proximity to the kitchen, John or Molly were best for that.

Q raised an eyebrow, leaning in slightly. “Go on?”

John sighed a little, looking a touch saddened. “Remus is refusing to allow a relationship given that he’s a werewolf,” he explained quietly. “He fears their potential future, if the Wolfsbane was ineffective in any way. He doesn’t want to hurt her. Not to mention that they cannot guarantee that any children they may have would not be affected.”

It made sense; Q breathed out, suddenly comprehending so much more about why they simply couldn’t work it out. “They can’t guarantee either way,” Q mused. “Is there any research about the possibility of inheritance?”

John shrugged. “Tonks is looking, but there’s nothing so far,” he admitted. “I’ll have a look myself too, but it’s trickier… there may be some rumours in Muggle circles, I suppose, legends et cetera. If I can find anything, I’ll chase it up on Wizarding channels. The internet is still beyond your lot.”

“That reminds me – how’s Sherlock?” Q asked, with a touch of mild concern. Every time he’d seen Sherlock, over the past few weeks, he had been thinner and paler. He looked like he had fallen ill, except that he was working with a truly manic fervour.

The melancholy in John’s eyes twisted into something more deftly wrought, and deeply unhappy. “He won’t tell me what’s wrong, but I’m worried,” he admitted. “I mean, christ, he’s always been obsessive, but I haven’t seen him like this is a long time.”

Q nodded slowly, something unpleasant curling in his stomach. “I’m going to have a word, if you don’t mind,” he told John in a low voice, and moved to the door, heading up to find his brother.

Sherlock was frenetic, truly manic in his motion. Q had never quite seen the like of it; he was all over the place, darting from one end of the room to another, pipette in hand and papers everywhere, tongue trapped between his teeth and insane in the sheer level of energy he was exuding.

“Sherlock?” he asked slowly, uncertainly.

Sherlock didn’t look up, far too busy with whatever the hell he was doing. “Busy,” he said simply; he glanced around, smiled with a touch of madness, and hugged his younger brother without hesitation.

Now, Q was actively alarmed. “You’re not being yourself,” Q told him shortly. “John’s worried, I’m worried. What the hell is going on?”

For the first time, Sherlock really _looked_ at Q. “I’m fine,” he said, with terrible softness. “I am _fine_. I’m just adapting to this life, you can understand that, surely?”

Q looked at him with utter worry, the sense that there was something else, something that he couldn’t quite see. “Please be safe,” he asked softly, gently. “I know… actually strike that, I don’t know. But, I don’t want to see you hurt, Sherlock.”

Sherlock smiled slightly, backing off to his experiments, smiling sideways at his younger brother. “I don’t hurt,” he stated, a transparent lie, and promptly tuned Q out in favour of examining what looked like a spleen under a microscope.

There was little to be gained by lingering, when Sherlock obviously didn’t intend to continue talking. Q sighed slightly, leaving his brother behind, mind whirring with unpleasant possibilities that needed further examination and – most likely – a word with Mycroft. For the duration of the term thus far, Mycroft had stayed firmly in Hogwarts; he didn’t quite see that there was anything to be gained by visiting the Headquarters, when Dumbledore could keep him more than satisfactorily updated on site.

Q resolved to have said word over the holidays. Mycroft was almost certainly going to spend a decent proportion of the holiday in Hogwarts, to assist in monitoring students in Dumbledore’s frequent absences. It was more than likely that he had been asked to hold the fort, as it were, given that he was probably one of the best wizards in the world, after Albus himself.

In the meantime, Q trailed his way downstairs, back to the kitchen. John looked up optimistically when Q entered, raising an eyebrow in a transparent question that Q simply didn’t have the answer to.

“I’m going to speak to Mycroft too,” he explained instead, noting John’s disappointment at the lack of anything more substantial. “I don’t know what it is, John, but I don’t like it either. I…”

Anything Q was thinking of saying was broken off, _very_ abruptly, by Bond entering _with Irene Adler holding onto his elbow_.

For a brief moment, Q's vision literally whited out with jealousy, the type that threatened to knock him off his feet.

Irene smiled coyly at Q, a challenge lingering in her dark eyes, in the crimson pout. She was _playing_ with him, teasing him outright and seeing whether he’d bite, whether he was susceptible or not.

Bond – still impressively oblivious – slid his arm out of Irene’s grip, and moved to Q with a slightly stupid smile on his face. His arms returned to Q, as they _should_ , and Bond moved in to kiss him with spectacular tenderness.

Maybe not _quite_ oblivious, then.

His arm smelt of Irene’s perfume. Or her skin. Or something that made Q think of Irene bloody Adler, and consequently made him feel vaguely homicidal. “How are you, love?” Bond asked gently, fingers pushing errant hair from Q’s eyes.

It helped Q’s temper a little, but only a _very_ little.

“I’m fine,” he said instead, tone slightly bounced in a way Bond recognised; his expression clouded for a moment, searching Q’s face for clues and finding it devoid of any hints. Q had learnt that trait from his brothers: the ability to hide any and all feelings or thoughts, with minimal effort.

There would be time, to ask pertinent questions and decapitate certain females.

Bond kept his fingers knotted with Q’s as they sat, and filled Q in; the Order was still monitoring all Death Eater activities, had managed to curtail an attempted attack in Kent, removed Death Eaters from suburban London, and – as yet – not managed to actually remove a single member of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s supporters.

Overall, not brilliant – but lives had been saved, even if only a handful, and that was enough for the time being.

Meanwhile, Q had his own news.

Playing with various mobile phones had led Q to a neat new innovation. His Christmas gift from John the previous year had been proven redundant, due to Wizarding interference – and thus, Q had spent weeks finding ways to circumnavigate said interference and distortion.

That much, everybody knew.

The interesting development was that Q was relatively certain he had succeeded.

Of course, there was unanimous interest. If there was a new method of communication that could fly under the wires of Death Eater or Ministry notice, that was one hell of a success. It would mean contact in and out of Hogwarts was infinitely easier, that nobody would be able to monitor communications.

Especially, as Q continued, if he was able to encrypt the signal to only allow those with the right access numbers to use the wavelength.

Bond kissed him deeply, Q smiling into it and forgetting, for a while, that he had been angry before. Whisp also jumped into his lap, fur a deep gold, evidently approving of everything Q had been up to.

“I’ll test it, when I get back to Hogwarts,” Q told them, sliding a second mobile to John; he was the only other person, bar Sherlock, who would have any real idea of what to do with it. “Also, please don’t tell Arthur yet. He’ll try and dismantle it otherwise, and I’m quite proud of it how it stands.”

John smirked, shaking his head slightly. Arthur Weasley still, even after a year, found John the single most fascinating thing he had ever come across. From tinkering with Muggle equipment in his garage, he had managed to find a _real life Muggle_ to interrogate. Mercifully, he was working enough to be frequently away from Grimmauld Place; the Weasleys split their time between the Order and the Burrow, and John also made an occasional effort to vanish whenever he was around.

He slipped the phone into his pocket. “I’ll let Sherlock know too, he’ll be impressed,” John admitted, and disappeared through the door.

Irene was still lingering, a vaguely obsequious smile remaining across her face. “So what have you been up to?” Q asked, with a note of danger in his tone.

Bond’s thumb rubbed soothingly along Q’s calm, noting the tension, as Irene spoke in her irritatingly velvety voice. “James and I were speaking to Ministry officials,” she purred, looking up at Bond and _blinking_ in a way that managed to be seductive. Bond smirked.

Q felt the first stirrings of not quite jealousy, but of something far deeper and more frightening. Not the threat of her beauty, not any more, but the possible _reality_ of Bond having been taken in.

The thought impacted like a train, ice sliding down Q’s spine. He pulled away from Bond’s embrace slightly, keeping himself carefully schooled. “Do go on,” he asked, mind flickering, cataloguing the interactions and wondering, seeing connections.

From the start, Bond had obviously found her attractive. He did not have a good track record, to put it mildly, especially with beautiful women. As they had spent more time with one another, Irene had grown smugger, and Bond had seemed ever more taken with her; he would mention her in conversation despite her absence, referencing her skills flippantly when Q was off guard.

Some, more rational part of Q’s mind, was shrieking logic. Bond had never cheated. He had no reason to cheat. He was _married_ , and they trusted each other, had always trusted each other

But Q had been away a lot over the last year, and it was always possible that loneliness had translated into something further.

Q felt abruptly, painfully sick.

Irene was still talking, Bond interjecting occasionally, the pair laughing with far too much ease and Q wanted to throw up and cry simultaneously, and this was all too bloody much.

“Excuse me a moment,” he managed, still with perfect control, and left the kitchen with Bond’s eyes heavy on his back, watching with evident concern.

Q didn’t bother pretending he could bear any more of it. He went straight to the front door – ignoring Mrs Black – and Disapparated.

-

Bond, of course, was confused and a little bit angry and a lot bit worried.

Q took the day to calm down, to try and think even faintly rationally. The panic was dying back into something more manageable, and the promise of some sort of rational plan. There was no point having a confrontation over potentially nothing, over Q’s supposition, probably born of tiredness and stress after a long term that was approaching Christmas.

The mobile phones were tested, and turned out to be a spectacular success. John and Q whooped down the phone to one another, Sherlock’s acerbic commentary in the background a welcome addition, and Bond’s voice murmuring that he missed Q and loved him.

With the success of his latest venture buoying him up, Q sighed out that he loved Bond too, and promised himself that it would be alright.

Christmas was revving up in full force – and, what was more, Slughorn had issued practically everybody with invitations to his Christmas party. Q was dreading it, Mycroft was drily sceptical of the entire affair, and it altogether seemed like a truly disastrous idea that Q wanted absolutely no part of.

However, there was no elegant way of getting out of it. Minerva, Filius and others had all been issued invitations too, and unless there was a mass teacher’s strike – which seemed imprudent at best, and outright rude at worst – they would all need to begrudgingly attend. It was unofficially decided that they would remain together as a pseudo-cult, and not be drawn in by Horace’s general booming self.

In nice robes again, Q trudged to Slughorn’s party, mercifully encountering other teachers en route. He only needed to be there for a few hours, after all, and could then issue his apologies and get away before too much damage or brain cells were compromised.

As a mild consolation, Snape was there too; he looked just as unhappy with the proceedings as Q felt, his expression fixed in outright contempt. Minerva rolled her eyes, and went to attempt to coax him out of sulking with minimal effect.

Q, instead, chatted to Pomona and Poppy for a while; he didn’t see them as much, given that Pomona mostly stayed up in the greenhouses, and Poppy in the medical wing. They were lovely, great company and even better conversation. Both knew Q from his childhood, but never really brought it to attention; he was their colleague, and they treated him like the adult he had become.

Harry Potter appeared after a while, and looked very lost for a while. Q watched him curiously for a little while, feeling slightly sorry for the boy. Meanwhile, Hermione Granger had appeared with Cormac McLaggen, of all people; Q detested the child, an arrogant and overbearing creature with precious little in the way of manners.

“Hello,” a young voice said, behind Q.

He turned, finding Luna Lovegood in an absurd getup, smiling at him with quiet calm. “Hello Luna,” Q returned, with a smile. “What brings you here?”

She shrugged, in her dreamy manner. “Harry invited me,” she explained lightly. “Ginny was already going, and she and Harry had an argument about something, and she invited Dean instead as revenge. Harry invited me as a friend. It was very nice of him, nobody invites me to parties as a friend.”

Q was possibly one of the very few who really understood Luna’s straightforward, blunt manner. He enjoyed it, actually; through the dreaminess of her speech came an almost brutal, painful observational quirk. “That’s fantastic,” he said honestly, trying not to think too much about the adolescent politics involved with Dean, Harry, Ginny and potentially Draco. “You look lovely, by the way.”

“Is Professor Bond alright?” she asked lightly. “I expect he’s being looked after, but the Prophet said he was in the Scottish Highlands… I don’t think that’s right though, my father agrees…”

It was a little difficult to contain a smirk. “You and your father are quite right,” Q replied, in what had to be a first for the Quibbler. “Shouldn’t you be talking to your friends? I can’t be the most interesting of conversationalists…”

“I like you,” Luna said simply. “Hermione is trying to run away from her date, and Slughorn captured Harry… hmm. I’ll go find him. He may like company. Slughorn may want to recruit him to the Rotfang Conspiracy… he’s a Ministry ally…”

On that note, Luna all but floated back into the melee of the party. Q shook his head slightly, as always mildly confused by Luna’s bizarre theories that were, without doubt, encouraged by her father.

Minerva recaptured him in conversation a heartbeat later, with a discussion about Harry’s newfound potion abilities; Q had to concede that he didn’t have the faintest idea, but could see Snape out of the corner of his eye, looking grimly unimpressed with the whole proceedings.

A few minutes later, a loud hubbub exploded from the doorway; Filch entered with a bedraggled, exhausted-looking Draco Malfoy. Apparently, attempting to gatecrash.

Q sighed a little, as Snape hooked the boy around the collar, and took him away for a ‘quiet chat’. Of course, Harry decided to follow a few minutes later, which Q honestly couldn’t say was an overwhelming surprise. Q couldn’t really justify following as well, given the profusion of teachers, and the necessity of trusting that Severus had matters in hand.

Thus, Q escaped the party as soon as he was able, and waited for term to end with happy anticipation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts and feelings and general rants are always welcome, of any variant <3 Take care now! Jen.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy, you darling things. Jen.

Term had built momentum as Christmas approached; Hagrid had hoicked in infinite numbers of monstrously-sized trees, propped them up around the Great Hall. Q, of course, helped with the decorating as he had the previous year, with help from a couple of other teachers and the various Prefects.

They may or may not have wound up in a massive bauble fight, started by Peeves, which degenerated into various curses and jinxes being thrown across the Great Hall. Filius and Pomona were particularly bad, unapologetically levitating larger baubles and using them as lethal weapons while students shrieked, and Peeves heckled.

Peeves did put a bit of a dampener on matters by trying to throttle a seventh-year Hufflepuff Prefect with tinsel, but a few spells and the threat of the Bloody Baron sent him neatly on his way.

Q had prepared for the holidays with piles of work for his various students. Most of them were less than delighted, with the unsurprising exception of Miss Granger. As he had the previous year, Q set her some extra work that was entirely optional, but potentially something she might enjoy; the potential links between palmistry and Arithmancy.

She had looked sceptical, but intrigued. Really, the best possible reaction to challenging new concepts one could wish for.

The end-of-term feast, two days after Slughorn’s party, was predictably fantastic. Dumbledore was actually present, for seemingly the first time in weeks, and took great joy in wearing an oversized sombrero for most of the feast. Q wound up in a beret, which he personally found rather dashing, and was covered in Sticking Glitter for the next week from some overenthusiastic party poppers.

Q left immediately after the teachers’ addendum to the Feast: a large number of very alcoholic drinks, Christmas celebrations, general drunken revelry. Sybill was hilariously drunk on sherry for the most part, Pomona and Poppy sang Wizarding carols and versions of Weird Sisters tracks, and the only sober participants were Snape, Mycroft and Firenze.

It was the one night a year when no teachers remained on patrol. Instead, the ghosts and portraits were employed, given full power – to be honest, no students usually bothered to exploit the lack of supervision. They had no idea there were no teachers, and so behaved as they would normally do.

Q got himself spectacularly drunk, draped himself over a tipsy Minerva who hugged him like a long-lost mother, giggled to his stone-cold sober brother that he _loved_ Christmas and him and Arithmancy and Hogwarts and James and glitter and magic, and was thankfully saved from attempting to Apparate to Grimmauld Place by said stone-cold sober brother, who took Q by Side-Along so he didn’t Splinch.

Of course, Q promptly threw up on the doorstep and Mycroft’s shoes when they got there.

Mycroft opened the door with the long-suffering sigh of an elder sibling, and passed a still very inebriated and very loved-up Q into the arms of his husband.

Bond, when he could keep a straight face, coaxed Q up to their room. He daubed away the residual vomit and attempted – with no success – to remove the glitter, nodded and smiled along with Q’s slurred declarations of adoration and love, and hushed him into bed despite Q’s adamant protestations that he was _fine James, really_ and tried to coax Bond into sex.

Which would have probably worked, had Q not fallen soundly asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.

-

Q woke up feeling like he had been hit very, very hard over the head, and been left to fester and die somewhere, with the corpses of furry animals in his mouth. Trying to move made his head spike, so he decided that was enough of that, and instead let out a melodramatic moan to attract sympathy from (hopefully) James.

“You are hopeless,” a voice told him fondly, and stroked down his cheek.

James.

Q grinned, and leaned slightly into the touch. The fingers went – Q let out a faintly plaintive noise – and returned with tea. “Merlin above, this is why I married you,” Q mumbled, and tried to sit up again.

Pain lanced through his chest blindingly. “Yes, you’re going to hurt for a while,” Bond told him drily. “Alcohol and pain potions do not mix. John’s on the case, but you’re on your own for a little while yet.”

A small, sad nod. Q looked over at his lover blurrily, smiling again as Bond tenderly placed his glasses on his nose, and hooked an arm around his back to help prop him against the pillow. “Bloody _hell_ , that hurts,” Q whined, pouting at Bond who looked relatively unsympathetic.

“That’ll teach you to get hammered at the teacher’s Christmas party,” Bond told him firmly, smiling to take the sting out of it; he had done the same thing, years previously, when he first joined the staff.

The year’s party had been rather alcohol-sodden as a whole, anyway; Umbridge had essentially prevented any type of true revelry amongst the staff the previous year, so it had been a rather sober affair that broke up at eleven, rather than the 3AM that Q had been transported home at. 

Q waved a hand nonchalantly, and eagerly accepted the tea. “Tell me you brought toast?” he asked optimistically, making a childish squeal of satisfaction at the plate Bond proffered. “I love you, James.”

“Yes, so you mentioned,” Bond teased, and kissed Q’s forehead again. He pulled back a moment later, with a slightly apologetic expression. “You need a shower. I can run you a bath, if you like? Might help with the pain, too.”

Unsurprisingly, Q’s expression turned a little mischievous. “Only if you’re joining,” he negotiated, with a challenging note and endearing optimism.

Bond rolled his eyes, and nodded. “Stay here,” he said firmly, knowing Q’s habit of over-enthusiastically denying he had any pain receptors if he humanly could.

Q drank his tea to hide his exceptionally obvious smirk, and watched Bond head out to start running the afore-mentioned bath. He put the tea down a moment, swung his body to one side and stood, feeling a little like a newborn deer; once the swaying had stopped and pain mostly abated, he took his tea in one hand, toast between his teeth, and used the other hand to steady himself as he followed Bond to the bathroom.

-

Downstairs, everybody was revving up for Christmas. Decorations hung from every conceivable surface and then some, the Weasleys had once again decamped en masse to Grimmauld Place, Remus and Tonks were staying for a while, Fleur Delacour had joined Bill Weasley, Harry had also moved in for the holidays, there was practically no space left, Mrs Black had reached a state of utter apoplexy, and Irene Adler flitted in and out like a particularly unpleasant poisonous insect.

The Weasleys had, originally, intended to be at the Burrow for Christmas; there was just about enough room to fit their family and a handful of extras, and they were far more accustomed to organising Christmas there.

However, the members of the Order had become immensely close, over the preceding year. With Bond and John both living at Grimmauld Place the previous year, and now the addition of Sherlock, there had simply been more traffic through the house; Order members came and went, Arthur consistently visited to grill John on Muggle life, Molly to cook for them despite their efforts to the contrary. Q lived there whenever he was free, and Remus often used one of the spare bedrooms given that he was frequently displaced.

The Weasleys decided, therefore, to ask Harry – the technical owner of Grimmauld Place – if they could host Christmas there. A far bigger house, with enough room for absolutely everybody they could conceivably invite.

Harry agreed delightedly, and so Grimmauld Place exploded with life.

Q watched his brother, of course, at John’s behest; Sherlock vacillated between infectious joy for everything around him, to a catatonic apathy that nothing would break him from. Q also managed to notice extended periods of absence, Sherlock simply dropping off-radar for a while, locking all doors in the vicinity.

On the bright side, he had stopped glowing entirely.

John, on the other hand, was visibly on edge. “Q, I don’t know what to do with Sherlock,” he admitted, voice low and heavy with unhappiness. “He’s all over the place. I think… fuck, I don’t know what I think. I just… he won’t talk to me, and I tried to confront him but he’s just being bloody _hostile_ … can you watch him for me?”

Q nodded, brows contracted with worry. Mycroft wasn’t arriving until Boxing Day – he was, as predicted, looking after Hogwarts until then – and Q had never had his brother’s observational skills.

Nevertheless, he tried to keep a look out. Bond confirmed that his behaviour had been erratic at best, and slightly frightening at worst, and he had no idea what in the hell was wrong with the man.

The answer lingered on Q’s tongue, but he frankly didn’t want to contemplate it.

He, like John, decided to indulge in temporary and very voluntary tunnel vision. Christmas was two days away, and just until then, they had an impromptu agreement to not say or do anything adverse concerning Sherlock.

Concentration swung around to Remus and Tonks, their almost-relationship which seemed to be finally building into something more substantial. Remus had been grilled by a number of different people on why on _earth_ he was rejecting Tonks on such spurious grounds, and bit by bit, he seemed to be softening.

Everybody harboured quiet hopes, and understandably so.

Q watched Harry and Ginny Weasley with considerably less hope, at the stage of simply giving up. There was nothing to be gained by a conversation with the boy – he would only ever deny it – and thus, Q could only watch.

Frankly, he seemed almost happy. Either the relationship was a good thing, or he was a consummate actor. Given that he was having private lessons with Dumbledore too, he probably had enough to worry about; a safe and sweet flirtation with a very lovely girl was not the worst idea in the world. Or, so Q told himself optimistically.

In practise, the sheer volume of people in Grimmauld Place made the entire place heave. Other Order members filtered in and out; Christmas Eve involved Kingsley and Minerva, as well as the entirety of those living in the Order. The tree scraped the ceiling, presents heading skywards in a mounting heap, Mrs Weasley fretting about Christmas dinner while bluntly ignoring any offers of help from Fleur.

John wound up helping a fair deal, along with Bond – something Q had certainly not expected – given that apparently, both were fairly good cooks. Bond, actually, was excellent. John was mostly placed on the sprouts and peeling potatoes, while the various kids in the house were on washing up. Arthur wasn’t back until very late working, and Kingsley also wound up leaving extremely early to take on a night shift.

Q escaped most duties by virtue of having been working full time, which allowed him to spend a good amount of time with the other Order members who filtered in and out. Tonks was always a wonderfully fun person to have around, and her mood was picking up with the infectious mood around Grimmauld Place; her hair had finally developed some actual colour, which Whisp naturally mimicked the moment he saw her.

Snape dropped in occasionally, which was funny on a number of levels; Bond and Snape were antagonistic to a truly hilarious degree, Harry and Snape even more so, and generally his visits were followed up by a large bitching session by all those who harboured any form of dislike for the man.

The day also brought the triumphant Weasley twins back to Grimmauld Place. Their joke shop was closed for the days just around Christmas, but they were still handling owl orders, and had a body of staff who kept things ticking over. Of course, they brought with them a host of new innovations, meaning that miniature indoor fireworks, sparklers, three-inch Christmas fairies and all manner of intangible things appeared from seemingly nowhere.

Harry collared Remus and Q at one stage, and accosted them about what he had heard at Slughorn’s party; apparently, Draco Malfoy was denying help from Snape, who was quite fervently offering it, and had made an Unbreakable Vow at some stage to assist Draco.

It was curious, but not really grounds for undue worry. Q and Remus made their best efforts to diffuse Potter – who was evidently on edge about the entire affair – and encouraged him to return to the celebrations.

Christmas Eve was just a complete, unadulterated riot. Mrs Black’s yelling was actually drowned out by the amount of noise coming from everywhere else in the building; exploding snap with a side of serious gambling occurred in the main portrait room, the kitchen was a veritable feast that everybody headed in and out of, Firewhiskey was absolutely everywhere, the upstairs dining room ended up being used for a strange game of charades, somebody decided wink murder would be a good idea, Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder was utilised by somebody or other, and altogether it was a wonderful mess.

Q spent the evening laughing, Bond’s arms around his waist, kissing him unapologetically at various intervals. They stumbled into the downstairs bathroom at one stage, and Q gave Bond a truly spectacular blowjob, Bond reciprocated with a handjob, and they cleaned themselves up in record time and returned straight back into the party.

The next morning, most woke up feeling like they had been hit with something solid, and ignored it favour of getting started on John’s Christmas cocktails. Apparently, his time had not just been spent looking at Wizarding theory.

Nobody had any idea what was in them, but they were _good_.

Sherlock was, curiously, just as involved in the general revelry as everybody else; he wound up playing the violin halfway through the morning, taking requests, Q singing with him as they hadn’t done since their childhood.

Of course, that degenerated quickly into everybody singing along with various tracks, Sherlock snorting as he tried to keep time with the infectious excitement, presents being levitated across the room to various recipients.

Q had mostly done his Christmas shopping via Bond; he told his husband precisely what to buy, and Q wrapped them when he got to Grimmauld Place. Sherlock had a beautifully monogrammed scarf; John had a multi-dimensional book on Magical creatures, which had pop-up representations of the creatures discussed; Mycroft would have an engraved wand case; Bond had an enchanted Quidditch team with models of the Holyhead Harpies – his favourite team – and tickets to their next match.

In return, Q acquired a rather lovely parka from his stubbornly Muggle brother; a home-brewed Happiness Elixir and a subscription to Arithmancy Weekly from said brother’s _actually_ Muggle partner; a truly gorgeous silver pocket watch from Mycroft; and, from Bond, a polished oak wand stand and a limited edition copy of _The Importance of Arithmancy: A Dependable Way to Understanding Truth_. Q had mentioned the book, in passing, a very long while ago, as one of the keystones of why he adored the subject.

Christmas dinner happened at about five o’clock, which meant by that point, everybody was ridiculously excitable. John had introduced everybody to Monopoly, which had meant a long lecture on Muggle money, mass confusion, and a lot of cheating. Exploding Snap had graduated onto actual poker, which was a bad idea given that Bond was a truly exceptional player. As was Sherlock, it transpired, a little unsurprisingly.

Tonks and Remus finally, _finally_ , kissed properly. Partly to do with mistletoe, and partly to do with the fact that Molly had finally conceded defeat over Fleur; she had a long, sharp conversation with Remus, and shortly afterwards, he had pulled Tonks into a startled kiss.

They received a standing ovation, and Tonks’ hair finally returned to bubblegum pink.

Fred and George once again released the seeming contents of their entire joke shop, which meant flying stars and sparks and fireworks and more elves singing Christmas songs and an overwhelming hubbub of noise, while Mrs Weasley tried to work out where everybody was given that the kitchen table had been elongated by a substantial proportion, and still barely everybody fitted.

Ron, Harry and Ginny were sheltered in the far corner, for example, balancing plates on their knees and letting Fred and George sail food in their direction intermittently. Overall, there was more food in the air than on the table, as passing things was more effort than it was worth.

The small dampener was Percy Weasley’s conspicuous absence, which made Mrs Weasley cry softly until Arthur coaxed her back. 

Irene flirted again, which was actually surprisingly funny. Q had expected to be once again overtaken by incoherent jealousy – which he was, a bit – but it was overwhelmed by everybody else’s responses to her.

For example: Tonks was surprisingly entranced by her, Fred Weasley was distinctly not, Minerva was sideswiped for an intriguingly long time, and Albus – when he dropped briefly in to say hello – was completely unconcerned by her stellar beauty.

It was an odd comforting thing to witness, from Q’s perspective, especially in the light of the previous year with Umbridge. Homophobia may have been alive and well in some facets of the Ministry, but then, so was non-binary sexuality.

Q smiled slightly to himself, and returned attention to the other threads of conversation that lingered around the table.

At a far later time than could really be considered respectable, everything wrapped up. Bond and Q headed to their bedroom, soundproofed the door, and didn’t emerge until rather late the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold on to your hats.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Here goes. This is NOT a fun chapter. Beware some potential triggers (see end author's notes for details...) Jen.

The days following Christmas were a sharp contrast to the revelry of the preceding days.

Q stumbled out of his and Bond’s bedroom – leaving Bond snoring – with a ferocious hangover, the pain in his chest almost overwhelming, to find an owl from Mycroft informing him that he would not be at Grimmauld Place for another two days. To say it was a disappointment would be grossly underestimating matters; Q had rather hoped to actually _see_ his brother in some of the days around Christmas.

Apparently, Q was the first to rise; there was nobody about as he managed his way down to the kitchen to rifle for John’s potions, to find John himself, sat in the wreckage of the previous night’s party with dark circles around his eyes and a terrifyingly steady gaze. “John?” Q asked, mouth painfully dry; he didn’t really trust himself, between a hangover and intermittent hand spasms, to use aguamenti. He used the tap instead.

“Sherlock,” John said quietly, handing Q a potion without really looking at him. “He’s not himself. Had a temper tantrum, for want of a better phrase, and I left. I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with him.”

Q blinked; it took a fair amount, to make John swear like that. He downed the water and potion – which had the charming side effect of knocking parts of his hangover on the head – and continued to watch John. “Okay,” he murmured, waiting for his head to clear a bit. “I’ll go see him. I need to eat something though, or I’ll throw up on him.”

John smiled very slightly, expression a little less edged. “I’ll put some toast on, you sit down,” he ordered; Q willingly remained in place, snorting as others trailed in upon smelling anything cooking. Molly, naturally, materialised to take over cooking; Q had no idea how she managed it, but to supplement John’s toast, he found himself facing eggs and porridge less than two minutes later.

Arthur was in his dressing gown, Ginny simply exhausted, Fred and George both hilariously hung over, Fleur looking irritatingly perfect. Nobody else had appeared yet, but it was already common knowledge that Remus and Tonks had shared a room upstairs for the night.

Mass cackling ensued, everybody brimming with pure satisfaction at that little development.

Shortly afterwards, another surreal turn occurred with the appearance of a letter from Percy Weasley, inviting Harry and the Weasley parents to a small get-together in the Ministry. It was surprising, to say the very least, and Q had many theories as to why – theories that were echoed by everybody else in Grimmauld Place.

Quite honestly, the general assumption was that Percy would have turned up at the Burrow, had Christmas been held there. As it was, they needed a better excuse to talk to Harry, and decided on that instead.

There was a general melee of discussion about whether or not they should go, before eventually deciding there was no real harm. The Ministry would do nothing particularly adverse without risking a public backlash, and Arthur would need to go for the sake of his job. Everybody else had filtered downstairs by that stage, in various states of exhaustion and general wellness.

While the discussions moved back and forth, Q took his leave to head upstairs, in a perhaps overoptimistic attempt to find out what in the hell was wrong with Sherlock.

He tapped on the door of the room Sherlock and John had taken over, waiting for a reply that never came; he sighed a little, trying to knock again, a little louder. Chances were Sherlock had got as drunk as the rest, and had just passed out in his usual inimitable way to sleep like the dead.

Either way, he needed to be spoken to properly; Q had never seen John look so wretched, or so upset. “Sherlock, if you don’t answer, I swear I’ll break the door in,” he snapped, trying to emulate Mycroft’s usual commanding tone. “Seriously. Let me in.”

There was still no response, on any front.

Q took out his wand, and cast _alohomora_ on the door.

It let out a small click, and Q turned the handle easily enough, letting him into an almost-neat room. John had clearly influenced a good deal of the tidiness, but Sherlock’s unbelievable clutter had also taken over a great proportion of the room. Q actually found it relatively endearing to see – the unevenness, the influence of two conflicting factors who were still so very close.

For a moment, Q couldn’t actually see his brother.

“ _Please no,_ ” he breathed, and felt his legs turn to water; he propped himself up on a cabinet, gesturing at the door with his wand so it slid shut, letting him sink to the floor and watch his brother lie on the bed, smiling faintly, disconnectedly.

Q hesitated for a quiet moment, and just retched slightly, unable to prevent tears. Not again. He could _not_ watch this again.

As he had when he was a child, he watched Sherlock sitting in the corner of his bed, tourniquet loosened around his left arm and needle on the bedside table, a small vial of some indeterminate potion next to him which Q could only assume was how he had been hiding the track marks.

He had known. Some distant part of him had known, for a little while now, that Sherlock had found the drugs again. Heroin, coke and frequent morphine had been his vices before, probably were again, given the rollercoaster of depression and unprecedented social brilliance he’d been demonstrating recently.

It would take a little while for Sherlock to come down.

Q slumped against the wardrobe, crying in silence, expression almost blank, and waited.

-

After a short while, Sherlock’s senses fully returned; he tended to dose himself up enough to lose all track of the surrounding world, white out all sense or worries or pains and allow himself full anaesthesia for as long as he could make it last.

“You fucking _bastard_ ,” a voice told him, throttled with hate and pain and anger. “You… Sherlock, why the _fuck_? Why? I thought you were clean, I thought you were _done_ with all this…”

Sherlock lifted his head, looking at his younger brother. Q was curled by his wardrobe, knees tucked up to his chest, immensely small and immensely fragile. Sherlock remembered, briefly, Q looking almost precisely the same way when he had first discovered that his brother was quietly killing himself.

“Q,” he managed, tongue slightly heavy. “Sorry – must’ve got the proportions wrong, I wasn't anticipating such an extended low… hmm. Must examine that.”

In a heartbeat, Q was on his feet; he wrenched Sherlock’s relatively pliant body up by his hair, and slapped him.

Sherlock’s head snapped to the side, and Q staggered back, cheeks wet and red and all but panting with anger. “You selfish, arrogant _bastard_ ,” Q yelled at him, while Sherlock struggled himself back to full consciousness, the euphoria taking the edge off the guilt he knew he should probably be feeling. “I hate you, for this. I can’t do this again, I can’t make _Mycroft_ do this again… Merlin, I need to tell Mycroft, John…”

“You won’t,” Sherlock snapped, fully coherent, cheek throbbing. “You will tell nobody, you understand?”

Q raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a child any more, you can’t threaten me, and you can’t stop me,” Q told him curtly. “You’re going back to rehab. I’m guessing from that you’re speedballing again? You could fucking _die_ , Sherlock, is that what you want?”

“ _It stops everything_ ,” Sherlock bellowed, cutting over Q’s tirade and causing an abrupt, awful type of silence. Q didn’t say a word, waiting for Sherlock to elaborate, to _explain_. “It stops the magic,” Sherlock continued, voice far softer suddenly. “My magic. It’s the only way to stop it… under my skin, it lives in my skin, and this makes it stop.”

That explained the lack of glowing, the unexplained calm, the fact that Sherlock – when everybody had been sure he would need to learn magic, now – had not needed it. He had resorted to _drugs_ rather than using magic.

It was an excuse, but a poor one for something that could bloody well kill him. “I’m contacting Mycroft, right now,” Q told him quietly. “You’ll stay here, come down properly. I’ll let John know. I think he’s known for a while, actually, but didn’t know what in the hell to do – you’ve hidden it well, I’ll give you fucking credit for that.”

“You swear too much,” Sherlock slurred.

Q felt anger spark once again. “I don’t give a _shit_. You’ve lied to everybody, you’re back on the bloody drugs, you’ve had everybody panicking and all because you’re a selfish _wanker_ who’s too _proud_ to deal with his problems like an adult. You’re not a teenager, Sherlock. This won’t go away just because you _want_ it to. Do you want to kill yourself?”

There was a pause.

Breathtaking, horrible silence.

“I don’t know,” Sherlock murmured.

Q, for the second time, felt his balance sway horribly. “What?” he breathed, hoping he was wrong, _praying_ he was wrong. “Sherlock, you… you want to kill yourself? You want to die?”

Sherlock glanced up at him, pupils shot, dark rings obvious around his eyes, skin sallow; Q suspected he had been doing what he always did, using makeup and Muggle trickery to hide the signs.

For the rest of his life, Q would never forgive himself for not seeing.

“I told you I don’t know,” Sherlock replied pragmatically, after another excruciating silence. “I had a life that I had constructed, that I liked – and that I have now lost.”

Q shook his head mutely, disbelievingly. “And you’re building a new one,” he pointed out, with a shadow of desperation. “You have _John_. He waited months for you to come back, he missed you so _bloody_ much… I missed you, for Merlin’s sake. Mycroft spent months of his life desperately trying to track you down…”

Sherlock’s head snapped up, expression stormy and shattered. “And he failed,” he rasped, with a terrible edge. “You all failed. It didn’t stop them finding me. I spent days in the charming custody of wizards, _your_ sort, and it illustrated just what type of people _wizards_ are.”

“If you think the Unspeakables are good examples of wizards, you’re remarkably ignorant,” Q retorted easily. “I don’t what in the hell they did to you, but it isn’t our fault. Mycroft or John or me, it isn’t _our fault_.”

Sherlock shook his head, emotions far too close to the surface, almost in tears – a surreal experience – as he rocked slightly on the bed. “I had control,” he hissed, staring at his own feet. “They took it.”

Q sighed out, exhausted and angry and too hurt, much too hurt for this. “I’m not a therapist,” he said softly, tiredly. “I’ll write to Mycroft now. John will be here in a second.”

“I don’t want him to see,” Sherlock interrupted quickly.

“You don’t have that choice any more,” Q told him, without apology or bitterness.

He strode to the door, shut it behind him, and let himself breathe for a minute, two minutes. John was going to be devastated, Mycroft stratospherically angry, they would have to go through the rehab debacle again, and it was going to be months before Q could have his brother back, _truly_ back.

“You bastard,” Q whispered to empty air, and went to the kitchen to find John, still in the midst of Boxing Day celebrations.

-

Bond had fallen out of bed maybe ten minutes prior to Q’s re-emergence into the kitchen; most people were up, most people were hungover, and there was a universal consensus that food was needed.

Therefore, Mrs Weasley had rammed every inch of the table full of food, and everybody had descended like locusts.

It took precisely half a second for Bond to establish that something was very, very wrong. “Q?” he asked softly, reaching to run a hand through his hair, beginning to seriously worry as Q crumpled forward into him. “Q, come on. Let’s get out of here, we don’t need an audience.”

Q was easily manoeuvred out, with John following on their heels. “James, I need to dictate a letter, not sure I can actually hold a quill right now,” he asked quietly, slumping against the banister outside the kitchen; he took out his wand briefly, waving it to search for Extendable Ears before retracting it again. “Erm… John, you need to come too.”

Bond didn’t bother listening to any more. He hooked an arm under Q’s waist, and half-carried him to their room. “John, you need to go to Sherlock,” Q murmured. “I’ve unlocked the door, if you have any problems getting in just call us. I… fuck, John. He’s using. I didn’t confirm, but I think he’s probably speedballing, he always used to, definitely heroin…”

“Fuck,” John said quietly; without a heartbeat of hesitation, he went to the door, and disappeared.

Q managed a handful of seconds himself, before allowing himself a quiet collapse onto Bond. “I thought it was all over, with Sherlock,” he said emptily, body trembling but all out of tears. “I… I should have seen it, I’ve seen it before… Mycroft would have seen… Merlin, yes, I need you to write to him.”

Bond gently tugged away from Q, and headed to their desk. Scamander was waiting in his cage, cooing almost sympathetically; Bond grabbed a quill and parchment, handing it to Q. “You’ll be fine,” he stated quietly, the surety of the statement somehow impacting.

Q stared at the parchment a moment, thinking. “Too slow,” he murmured aloud, pulling out his wand. He let a wash of utter calm take him for a moment, breathing woodsmoke and burnt caramel and earth and orange, and exhaled, wand circling easily. “Expecto patronum.”

A swan burst from the end of his wand, wing span taking half the room. Q closed his eyes, concentrating, letting his patronus sail through the defences of Hogwarts, wend towards Mycroft, wherever he was.

An intangible sense of having found his target. Q spoke, voice fragile but intact

“ _Myc, Sherlock’s using again. John’s looking after him. Heroin and coke, I think. Says it stops his magic, and he may be suicidal. Please come quickly, I don’t want to take him to St Mungo’s with Muggle drugs, or Muggle hospital with wizarding tendencies, I don’t know what to do, My._

_Love you. Sorry to land this on you today. Hope to see you soon.”_

Q waved his wand again, eyes opening slowly, sadly. “I never knew yours was a swan,” Bond commented with interest, looking over his lover; beautiful, but lethal. “Very nice.”

“A little less ostentatious than a lion,” Q said, smiling properly as he allowed himself to calm a little, relax into Bond’s words and voice.

Bond scooped his lover into his arms, gentle and sad. “This isn’t fair,” Q murmured, thinking of the joy of the previous few days, the ignorant but steadfast belief that Sherlock was alright, that this would _never happen_ again.

“No,” Bond agreed, kissing Q’s hair gently. “It really isn’t. He’ll be alright, Q. You’re getting him help – Mycroft will have a better idea what to do, John’s a Muggle doctor too…”

“I _know_ that,” Q interjected, with a small hiss of irritation, of displaced anger. “I _know_ he’ll be alright, I know everybody will work out how to deal with him – again – but I don’t _want_ everybody to have to. Mycroft’s done it before, and he was never really the same afterwards, nor was I, and John shouldn’t need to deal with Sherlock’s shit.”

Bond hushed Q gently, stroking through his hair, lost for anything he could possibly say. Q’s expression contracted for a second or two, brokenly. “He said he didn’t know if he wanted to die or not,” Q half-whispered, a little afraid of even admitting that fact, as though admitting it would make it more real. “I don’t want to lose him.”

A soft sigh, another kiss into Q’s hair. “We won’t let that happen,” Bond told him simply, quietly. “Nobody’s going to let Sherlock do anything stupid. We’ve caught it, we can start to deal with it.”

“I hope so,” Q murmured, not quite wanting to say aloud that he simply wasn’t sure anybody would be able to stop him, if Sherlock decided to attempt.

Downstairs, the door slammed open.

Mrs Black started shrieking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for drug abuse, suicidal ideation, and a hell of a lot of angst.
> 
> Thank you as always, I hope you're enjoying. Comments etc gratefully received, esp in the light of new developments... ;) Jen.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I warned you all...

Mycroft was a livid whirlwind, slamming up the stairs; Q intercepted, body a taught bowstring. “He’s in their room,” he explained quickly. “John’s looking after him.”

“Suicidal?” Mycroft asked, without preamble.

Q let out a slow breath. “Apparently it interrupts his magic, that’s all I know,” he said honestly, brow contracting. “He hates being out of control, and the drugs help – he said he doesn’t know if he wants to live, and I don’t know what to do with him, I…”

Mycroft didn’t listen to another word, brushing past Q towards John and Sherlock’s room; Q followed slowly, not quite sure what to do with himself, feeling like a child once again with his family falling apart in his hands, while he watched, unable to do anything.

Bond stayed close, a steady presence without encroaching, just waiting until Q asked. “I should go, see what’s…”

“Will it help?” Bond asked quietly, without judgement.

Q let himself think, for a moment. John would be handling Sherlock medically – and was probably the best person to deal with him mentally – and Mycroft would be the hard line presence who would kick some sense into him.

There was no point in being there as yet another presence, crowding, probably useless. “I don’t know,” he admitted, with a small look at Bond. “Mycroft won’t get anything out of him, Sherlock’s always only ever started yelling when Mycroft intervenes…”

“ _Q_.”

Point and example; Sherlock had impeccable timing. Q was in motion before Bond had enough time to even register the cry; Q darted up, slipping into Sherlock’s room, leaving Bond to carefully wait. This was not his to witness.

Sherlock sat, mostly placid, on the bed. John was next to him with a pile of Muggle medical supplies, things Q wasn’t quite sure of the names of; he’d seen them over the years, but never actually used them. His expression was eerily frozen, brisk and efficient motions, the manner of one in the eye of storm, who would wait for the chaos to break over him later. When he could afford it.

Mycroft, meanwhile, was something Q had never seen before. For one of the very first times in Q’s memory, he had entirely lost control; red-faced and almost panting with anger, the entire room was fraught with knife-edge tension, the livid melee of a situation nobody knew how to respond to with Sherlock, entirely calm, in the centre of it all. “He wants to talk to you,” Mycroft snarled.

“Piss off, Mycroft,” Sherlock told him sharply, looking at Q, eyes bright and steady and riddled with hate. “You’re a judgemental prick. Haul me into whatever fucked-up version of rehab you track down, but don’t try and understand or care about _why_ when you clearly don’t. Deal with the fucking technicalities, by all means, but don’t…”

“Sherlock,” Q interrupted quietly, as Sherlock confusedly repeated himself, voice vaguely slurred, sounding entirely unlike himself. Sherlock never swore, not like that; he sounded like the teenager that haunted the edges of Q’s memory. “We get it.”

John took a measured breath. “Mycroft, could you leave please?” he asked, voice flinty but solid, controlled. “Find somewhere for physical rehabilitation. Q and I will talk to him.”

Mycroft looked frankly mutinous; umbrella clutched in his hand like a lethal weapon, he strode past Q and out of the room.

“Okay,” Q said quietly, leaning on the edge of Sherlock and John’s shared desk. “Talk.”

-

Q was exhausted, by the time he was able to go back to the Boxing Day celebrations. By that stage, he had put with Sherlock’s insistent and very repetitive bleating that he couldn’t deal with his magic and he wanted everything to stop, and both Q and John had visibly tried to keep themselves in one piece while seeing somebody they loved relating the desperate anger, pain, that came with losing everything he had been.

Like Q, John also was finding it immensely difficult to forgive himself for not seeing. Everybody had believed – or was it wanted to believe? – that he had been adapting. That he was alright.

Sherlock, to his credit, was very much in control. John was prepared for a crash, not quite anticipating that Sherlock knew perfectly well how long his high would last, how long before he crashed, the various intricacies of being a long-term drug user who needed to keep it hidden from his closest friends and family.

After an hour or so of interrogation from Q and John, he seemed to get simply bored; the initial euphoria had faded, allowing him coherency and the need, the _want_ , to return to the celebrations downstairs while the rest of his high propelled him through.

John’s stoicism hadn’t died. Q was aware that he was probably the most emotionally raw of anybody; Mycroft was dealing via anger and displacement, John through acquired army techniques of simply getting on with the practicalities. There was nothing more to be done.

Sherlock was the life and soul. Partly through overcompensation; everybody knew something serious had unravelled upstairs, only a limited few knew quite what, but Sherlock was insistent that it was _not_ a tremendous problem, and he could deal with everything, and this would not be serious impediment and everybody was really making a massive fuss over nothing.

Mycroft was visibly struggling not to throttle the man.

To Q, only to Q, there were the treacherous signs of Mycroft breaking down. Red rims, the almost imperceptible tremble; Q had not been blessed with Mycroft or Sherlock’s observational skills, but he had enough to know Mycroft. Sherlock would have seen the same, had he been fully engaged in anything outside his own interests and need to prove everybody wrong.

Thus Boxing Day tripped along, with a notably muted air, and Q leaving at one stage to practically hyperventilate over the sheer _idiocy_ of everything happening, of Sherlock laughing while everybody who knew watched with tangible disbelief, an utter inability to compute or understand or _think_. Curious numbness. 

Q couldn’t help the blankness, the simple grief that didn’t quite leave – he tried valiantly to let fireworks or laughter alleviate, and he played the part perfectly without being even vaguely aware of it. There was a disconnect that had occurred somewhere in his body, and he let himself pretend while he himself remained in a distant part of his mind, sheltering. Bond held onto him, the steady presence Q trusted beyond all else, arms looped around him and always in sight, somewhere.

Tonks and Remus admitted – sheepishly, on the latter’s part – that they were definitely together. Everybody already knew of course, but it didn’t stop a thunderous round of applause and whooping from the Weasley boys.

In the evening, Harry and the Weasley parents disappeared to the Minister for Magic’s Boxing Day celebrations.

They returned less than an hour later.

Harry was visibly fuming, Molly was torn between delirious joy and hysterical tears, and Arthur had needed to remain at the celebrations to show willing. He eventually returned again, about an hour or so later, in the same spirit as Harry. “A blatant attempt to rally Harry to their cause,” he muttered, making Remus bristle slightly. “Scrimgeour’s not even attempting to be subtle.”

Nobody was surprised; the adult Order members had actually expected such a turn of events for a while. Harry was evidently a little more taken aback, and spent a decent proportion of the late evening unsubtly ranting at his peers.

Sherlock crashed in the late afternoon. John was naturally on alert – Sherlock was banned from going anywhere on his own, given that even with Mycroft Summoning everything he could think of, Sherlock was inevitably intelligent enough to find some way around it – and thus intercepted his almost-lover rifling through their room in a visibly livid frenzy, trying to find his stash.

John had called for Mycroft. The latter had Immobilised his brother, and asked John to administer a sedative; John poured the potion literally into Sherlock’s slack mouth, and ignored the raw hatred that stared back at him.

Q watched from the doorway, feeling immensely alone. Bond was downstairs with the others, and Q had followed John and Mycroft when they all realised – near enough in tandem – that it was time. They couldn’t keep on pretending.

Mycroft had conceded defeat on an external rehabilitation; there was nowhere that would adequately cater for him, and – in any case – nobody had ever been able to get through to Sherlock before, and there was no reason to think a collection of psychiatric professionals, Wizarding or Muggle, would have any real effect.

“I’m going to be taking care of him,” John explained to Q, a concept that made Q feel actively sick. “Mycroft was telling me there are ways to handle the physical addiction, there are Wizarding potions they used last time, it breaks the physical… then he just needs somebody who’ll get him through the mental dependency.”

Q took a moment to process, wondering how in the hell to phrase his next sentence: “John, it’s… Sherlock gets violent, catatonic, all sorts… even when the physical addiction was long gone, he was in rehab for a long time, he attacked counsellors…”

John didn’t smile, his expression resigned and hard. “If you can see another option, please, tell me,” he stated simply, with a note of something in his voice that Q found curiously heartbreaking.

There was nothing to be said; John disappeared back into his and Sherlock’s room, where his almost-lover lay unconscious, sweating with the earliest indications of withdrawal. Mycroft had been intermittently disappearing and reappearing throughout the day; he put Sherlock to sleep, vanished, returned with a collection of potions for John.

Sherlock slept, and Q could only watch as Mycroft explained how the potions worked, and John’s expression literally didn’t shift but his eyes became incrementally colder, deader.

Q couldn’t imagine how John was going to get Sherlock through his addiction, and retain any semblance of a relationship with him. It was literally beyond him, on a variety of levels – once again, Q couldn’t quite believe how _selfish_ Sherlock had been, was being. John had spent so long tailoring aspects of his life to Sherlock; displaced from his entire _world_ , trapped in Grimmauld Place for pretty much a year, limited contact with his once friends and family, waiting for Sherlock.

Loving Sherlock, in John’s quiet and understated way. Q wore his love for Bond on his sleeve, a proud talisman, something he honestly believed would protect him and keep him indefinitely. John loved in the quiet, and it was steady and constant and anchoring where Sherlock was none of the above, and meant he would stay, despite everything, despite knowing that Sherlock would potentially hate him by the end of it.

Even with loving Bond as he did, Q could only begin to conceive of that kind of commitment – especially when Sherlock stubbornly would not, or simply could not, reciprocate with anything even vaguely as constant.

A couple of days later, when John had watched Sherlock vomit insistently into a bowl for most of the afternoon, mopped him up, poured a collection of potions down his throat when Sherlock was vaguely cognisant and been sworn at insistently, Q couldn’t help but ask _why_.

“When we first met, he nearly wound up killing himself to prove a point,” John stated simply, smiling slightly at Q’s expression. “He’s brilliant, but he’s an idiot. This is how we work. He shows me amazing things – Christ, I’m living with _magic_ now – and I deal with him when he goes too far.”

Q nodded slightly, slowly. “Doesn’t it get…?”

“Frustrating? Infuriating? Tiring?” John filled in, laughing a little, despite himself. “God, yes. I spend half my time wanting to kill him, and the other half trying to stop him accidently killing himself. I can’t explain it without sounding like a masochistic idiot, but we balance out. True, this is further than I ever thought it would go, but I’m too far into it to leave now.”

“You don’t have to,” Q pointed out.

John just looked at him like he was an absolute idiot, an expression Q knew too well from Sherlock’s features. He didn’t say a word, and didn’t really need to.

Honestly, Q couldn’t quite remember most of what happened in the next few days.

Except for New Year. He would always remember New Year.

Sherlock had made it through the nastier physical aspects of withdrawal due to John and Mycroft’s swift intervention, and had been deemed stable enough to see everybody downstairs for a while, to welcome in the New Year.

Everybody knew, by that stage. News travelled fast, and one look at Sherlock confirmed everything; he had lost a decent amount of weight in a handful of days, was deathly pale, and refused to speak to another human being unless they pressed him, at which point he ripped their heads off in spectacular style.

The kitchen was once again flooded with people; Tonks, Arthur and many of the other older members of the Order were at work, but the Weasley clan were otherwise all present and correct, Minerva dropped in at around eleven just to see the turn of midnight, Mycroft was a dark cloud in the corner, and Remus remained in the edges of the kitchen – it was coming close to full moon, and he was dosing himself up on Wolfsbane.

To Q’s immense irritation, Irene Adler was also present.

Bond, once again, seemed to simply not _notice_ that she was unapologetically flirting.

It was New Year’s Eve, however, and Q bit back the odd feelings that burned through his body, and decided to behave like an adult. The hours ticked past, and everybody was just enjoying themselves, and it was just _fun_.

New Year struck; Bond and Q kissed gently, sweetly. Around them, everybody had paired off; Ginny and Harry kissed, Ron looked rather lost, Fred and George bickered over who would ask Irene which wound up with neither kissing anybody, Minerva kissed Mycroft – which was surreal on a number of separate and distinct levels – and finally, Sherlock and John.

Everything abruptly went very wrong.

Q broke away from Bond to see the Weasley twins set of fireworks, glitter, light dancing over every surface; he glanced over it with quiet delight, not feeling Bond’s hand disappear from his own. He took a moment to note Harry and Ginny’s passionate kiss in the corner, and snort outright at the sight of Minerva and Mycroft, including Mycroft’s expression. 

Q giggled as he exchanged glances with Mycroft; the latter just looked rather frightened at what had just occurred, before seeing behind Q, his expression falling and freezing in a heartbeat.

Q twisted around, to find Irene Adler kissing his husband.

And to see his husband kissing her back, arm around her waist and hand pressed to the small of her back, another running through her hair long hair while she pressed her body against him, intimate and deeply passionate and familiar and practised and Q felt the entire world suspend, completely stop for a moment, as Q watched and forgot how to breathe.

The world then broke back into immediate and horrendous life as Sherlock all but _exploded_.

Mycroft was the fastest to move, of course; he shot a Stunner directly at Sherlock, which threw him halfway across the room and knocked him out, attention splitting between Sherlock and John in equal and startled measure.

Sherlock had kissed John, and started glowing again. Angry, riddled with hatred that sank marrow deep, emotions going instantly off the scale now he had been taken off the drugs, and the magic was back in full force, and the glowing just proved it; Sherlock, without conscious intention, started throwing off magic like a lethal weapon once again.

John had been inches away from him at the time.

Q took a moment to work out what in the hell had happened, his mind not catching up anywhere near fast enough.

Minerva managed to reach John first. He was unconscious, bleeding on the floor of Grimmauld Place, Molly there a heartbeat later; they were two of the strongest at Healing spells, especially Molly. 

“St Mungo’s?” Minerva asked Molly quietly. Molly examined him quickly, wand spanning his body, and nodded quickly. “James, Remus, we need to get him outside – you’ll have to carry him.”

The tremors in Q’s hand had returned with a vengeance, as the stress, the shock, sparked through his nerves.

John was being more than adequately dealt with. Q moved to Mycroft instead, who was bent over Sherlock prostate form, looking him over with tangible worry; Sherlock’s skin was still an unearthly shade, even while unconscious, and it boded very badly that he was having emotional outbursts of magic again.

Of course, Mycroft waved Q off immediately. “I’ll handle him – go with John,” Mycroft told him sharply. “Sherlock will need to know he is safe, when he wakes.”

Remus and Bond occupied themselves getting John out the door; the nature of Grimmauld Place meant they couldn’t summon anybody until they were outside, and of course, they also could not cast magic in public. John needed to be moved by Muggle means, which left Bond and Remus carrying him between them.

Q, therefore, scrambled to the door and flung it open. The moment John was outside, Q cast his wand hand across his body in a horizontal swipe – like the Knight Bus, the St Mungo’s ambulance arrived an instant later. Everybody in the Wizarding world knew that shorthand, the fastest way to get help.

“I’m going with him,” Q said shortly, to the Healers, to Bond and Remus. Bond looked like he wanted to argue, but the raw, active emotion in Q’s expression that threatened to translate into spectacular anger stalled him. “I’ll be in contact with progress.”

The Healers beckoned him in quickly, already busy looking over John, ascertaining that he was a Muggle; Q almost tripped over words to explain that he had Ministry clearance to know about the Wizarding world, which was technically true – Mycroft had ensured it, when Sherlock had first told John.

They seemed mostly placated, and more concerned with ensuring his survival than anything else.

Q sat in the corner of the ambulance, head reeling, watching John breathe erratically while Bond and Irene played out across his retinas, scarred indelibly.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF WATCHING SKYFALL! AND NEARLY CHRISTMAS! AAA!
> 
> Hope you enjoy, ladies and gents. Jen.

To Q’s utter relief, John would make a full recovery, in relatively good time. He would be in St Mungo’s for a few days, mostly under surveillance, and then had clearance to be picked up by Mycroft and taken home to Grimmauld Place.

Mostly, Q found every excuse to remain in St Mungo’s. That was easily done for the first day or so, given that John was still in medical jeopardy; after that, Q was very aware that he was running away, and couldn’t bring himself to care enormously.

Term began at Hogwarts on the 7th January; Q was installed back in Hogwarts by the 4th, utterly unwilling to remain at Grimmauld Place longer than necessary.

Mycroft was an absolutely invaluable human being. Despite his understandable concern over Sherlock, he knew, with a single glance, that Q had dealt exceptionally badly with his husband’s behaviour. Q, for his part, didn’t bother to deny it.

Bond had kissed somebody else, somebody he _knew_ Q was insecure about, somebody who played on everything Q had ever feared and it was too much, it was far too much. He continued replaying everything he saw: the lingering nature, the press of their bodies, James’s mouth open and eyes closed.

It had looked intimate. It had looked passionate.

It had looked _loving_ , and that thought was enough to make Q literally want to throw up on the spot.

Naturally, Bond pestered Q with endless letters, overworking Myrmidon to a ridiculous extent as the poor owl flew directly to St Mungo’s, and back again; Q didn’t even bother to read the attached letters, just set fire to them in the corridor, and apologised to the irate Healers.

Of course, he also tried to see Q in person. Q refused, point-blank, to see him; the moment Bond came anywhere near, he was blocked by Q’s big brother. Mycroft had sufficient presence to warn Bond, in the severest terms possible, that he was to leave Q very much alone until he was ready.

Bond took that very badly. Mercifully, he was not suicidal enough to attempt a duel with Mycroft; he disappeared, asking that Mycroft carry a message to Q that he was sorry, and that he loved him.

Q shook his head a little, and tried very hard to obliterate every thought of Bond from his mind for a little while. There were other things to worry about.

“You will need to talk to him at some stage,” Mycroft pointed out, expression curled in utter contempt for the man, visibly livid on Q’s behalf; Q had debated asking what Mycroft had deduced from their kiss, but wasn’t actually sure he wanted to know the answer.

Q knew that he would need to address it. He knew full damn well. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to run away from the subject for a while longer,” he mumbled, burying his head in his hands, and aware that he desperately needed to sleep but really did not want to.

After hiding out at St Mungo’s for two days, Q had to return to Grimmauld Place; he saw Bond extremely briefly, before disappearing upstairs, essentially using Mycroft as a bodyguard.

Q had never been so grateful for his eldest sibling. It said a decent amount, that even with his life as it stood – a grown man with a steady job, responsibilities, a partner and a life that he had constructed mostly on his own – Mycroft was still there.

Seeing the way Mycroft behaved about Sherlock, Q should not have been quite so surprised. But then, Sherlock had always been the Troubled sibling; Q had been comparatively simple to deal with, and thus Mycroft’s attentions had been elsewhere.

Now, Q placed all his trust entirely in Mycroft’s hands, and unsurprisingly discovered that there was nobody better to depend upon.

Sherlock, meanwhile, was going gorgeously off the rails. Mycroft was offering him limited amounts of sympathy, given that his attentions were focused in keeping Q intact, which was irritating Sherlock no end.

In his uncharitable moods, of which there were many, Q wondered if Sherlock had constructed the entire relapse just to make everybody’s attentions focus back in on him. 

To be honest, it may well have been a contributory factor.

Mycroft was mostly unsympathetic because he simply didn’t understand. Sherlock’s magic, his outbursts, could be easily controlled by the man just _using magic_. Learning to channel the magic out safely, in the way young wizards were _taught to do_ ; Hogwarts existed from the age of eleven so that emotionally unstable children on the cusp of puberty wouldn’t accidently kill somebody.

From the moment Sherlock had obstreperously decided not to use magic, Mycroft had not understood. Q strongly suspected that he had _never_ understood. 

One of Mycroft’s great and only flaws: his utter inability to empathise.

Q understood. Sherlock had attempted to explain once, in his usual inept manner, and Q had understood more than even Sherlock did at the time. Certainly, he knew more than Sherlock would ever admit to.

Sherlock had grown up in a world wherein, even a child, even among other wizards, he was a freak. He had observational faculties that nobody could understand, did not relate to other children properly, had been lonely and ostracised.

Imperfectly, an eleven year old had decided that it was his magic that was the problem. A child who did not understand his own emotions made a decision entirely based on them, and with a stubbornness that would endure deep into adulthood, stuck by it, until the entire subject had an almost mythical status in his own mind.

Q could see it. Sherlock probably could have, if he’d tried hard enough, if he made the effort. 

Mycroft simply could not.

Q hoped that Sherlock would make the effort; if he did, he was more likely to concede defeat, learn to channel his magic safely. Given the fact that he had near enough broken down over inadvertently injuring John, Q strongly suspected that he would begin trying to use magic sooner rather than later.

Q had, of course, been in St Mungo’s the moment he heard that John was awake.

“This is a Wizarding hospital, then?” he asked, voice a little weak. “Christ.”

Q managed one of the first genuine smiles of the past few days. “Enjoying yourself?” he teased, watching John watch every single thing that was happening on the ward. “Sherlock sends his love.”

“Bollocks. He sends his affections, at absolute best,” John contradicted, without vitriol; his expression fell a little, quietly worried in a way that only John could pull off. “Is he alright? Honestly?”

Mycroft had clumsily conveyed that Sherlock was physically well, felt regretful at John’s predicament, and would be well enough to be in close proximity to by the time John returned to Grimmauld Place.

Which was just lovely, except that John was a creature who worked on emotions, not just on the technical knowledge. Q, therefore, expressed that Sherlock was falling to pieces with guilt over his actions, was likely to start using magic just to avoid hurting John again, and was clearly very badly craving his drugs back.

John nodded his gratitude, and tried to sit up. “Well,” he said, with a mild groan. “That isn’t going to happen any time soon.”

A short while later, Q made his excuses, and vanished out of the ward. Sherlock hung on his every word when he returned to Grimmauld Place, and while Q communicated everything he humanly could, it still seemed insufficient for his brother. Q made his way in and out of Grimmauld Place only when he knew Bond would not be present, and spent the time he had trying desperately to act as a stand-in for John, hopefully finding some way of keeping Sherlock together.

That evening, Q returned to Hogwarts. He spent the last few days before term organising lessons, and deconstructing all manner of Muggle devices to see what he could manipulate; Sherlock had a spare Beretta – nobody wanted to ask how – that Q stole, and took apart, wondering how it would work in a Wizarding context.

It kept his mind busy, and that was all that he cared about, at least for the time being.

Bond was still sending owls with irritating frequency; Q ran out of patience on the first day of term, writing a curt message to Bond, telling him to stop accosting him or he would send through a Howler expressing every facet of his current emotions, and possibly load it with some form of Itching Powder just out of sheer sadism. Not to mention, he was going to interrupt Q’s classes.

Harry and the Weasley children clearly didn’t have the faintest idea what had happened, but knew it had been serious; they shot Q wary looks, didn’t ask. With John in hospital, Sherlock tangibly out of control, Q barely present, Bond barely speaking, and Mycroft coming and going like a vengeful storm cloud, Grimmauld Place had not been the most hospitable of environments.

Q’s classes went perfectly, of course. They were relatively simple, and mostly involved an influx of essays from over the holidays. It was a good amount of work for Q, and he happily involved himself in Arithmancy technicalities, devoting every fraction of his energy to his work now that he had nothing outside to think about.

In the light of Sherlock’s drug addiction, Q also decided to make the rather masochistic decision to stop taking John’s potions. He could not bear the idea of becoming dependent on them. Either the pain would go away, or it would not, and he would need to learn to live with it either way and not drug himself up forever.

It made everything harder, of course, but Q was past the point of caring. Being physically exhausted made it easier to fall asleep at night.

After nearly a fortnight without so much as seeing Bond, Q decided it was about time to go back.

Bond had never cheated on Q before, to his knowledge. However, his track record – prior to meeting Q, at least – spoke absolute volumes. He had been a serial womaniser, used sex as a dispensable commodity, had been a member of a very elite branch of the Ministry that asked too much of him and tilted every thought about sex or other people.

On the quiet, Mycroft had told Q why Bond left the Ministry. A year later, Bond had told Q himself, but that was beside the point.

He had fallen in love, had been betrayed, had watched her die. Shortly afterwards, he left the Ministry, and Albus found him a teaching job to keep him from losing his mind altogether.

The spectre of Vesper Lynd hovered over Q, once in a while; she had been beautiful, too. Long dark hair, red lips, clear skin, perfect proportions; Bond had shown Q pictures of her, seen her pout at him with a smile that almost passed for coy, felt a surge of quiet sadness for her death and for Bond’s pain.

She was gone, however. Q was – supposedly – her replacement.

Never before had Q ever _felt_ like a replacement.

Mycroft had been keeping him company throughout the week, along with a number of staff who had always been rather protective of their youngest colleague; Minerva half-drowned him with tea, Filius with Chocolate Frogs and other biscuits, even Sybill attacked to tell him his life would be fruitful and joyous and he would be contented one day.

Snape just smirked at him, which made Q feel mildly homicidal, but allowed himself to be distracted by Pomona and Poppy and cake. The women truly all had their maternal instincts well and truly set alight by Q’s skinny and visibly distressed form, and thus fed him with all manner of sweet things and tried to coax him out.

The first weekend of term, Q went back to see how Sherlock and John were getting on; John had been released from St Mungo’s, and Sherlock was attempting to reach some state of balance, as best he could.

For the first time in Q’s life, he looked at his brother, and knew what depression truly meant. Beyond the reaches of the pain he was feeling over Bond, over everything from the previous year, even; this was something that was drawn in everything Sherlock was, etched deep through his skin, pervasive and horrific and inescapable.

“Merlin,” Q breathed, sitting at his brother’s side. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock didn’t even look at him.

John quietly took him to one side later on. “He’s not speaking, barely eating,” he murmured, shaking his head slightly, hand running through his short cropped hair. “I don’t want to give him much in the way of potions, in case he gets hooked on that instead… Mycroft was here a few evenings ago, tried to force Sherlock to use his wand… you know Sherlock, he usually screams buildings down when he’s cornered or angry… he just, sat there. Didn’t do anything.”

Q closed his eyes, in a curious form of grief he couldn’t quite express. “What are our options?” he asked quietly.

“We could put him in a psychiatric ward, but this is Sherlock,” John pointed out, with a slightly disparaging snort. “He’d run rings around them, and resent us for making him do it. He needs to use magic safely, and won’t. I’m out of ideas, and I think Mycroft is too.”

“Superb,” Q murmured, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I might talk to Albus. Ask him to talk to Sherlock, maybe? He spoke when Sherlock was young, when he first made the decision not to use magic…”

John shrugged, expression one of amused apathy. “Go for it. Anything’s worth a try, at this stage.”

Q went immediately.

In the hallway, he was trapped by Bond; the man caught onto his sleeve, twisted him around with surprising violence.

Q lividly shrugged him off. “Mauling me will really not help your case,” he said sharply, tired and livid, looking over Bond and seeing him, realising how much he had _missed_ the idiot, the clarity that the realisation gave his hurt. “Please don’t. Not right now. I have enough to deal with at the moment, I’ll talk to you when everything’s calmed down, I can’t have a conversation about this right now.”

“I’m sorry,” Bond told him, without preamble, blue eyes rimmed with dark circles. “It was a mistake, it was just…”

“Not _now_ ,” Q repeated, insistent, posture guarded in on itself. “It’s too much, with Sherlock… just, don’t. We’ll talk about everything at some stage, but _not now_. I can’t think properly right now.”

Q headed closer to the door, trying to get out and Disapparate before his resolve crumbled. “Irene was…”

Oh, spectacularly bad move.

Q’s temper completely snapped. He wheeled back, practically _spitting_ with anger. “If you think I ever want to hear a _fucking_ word about that woman again, for the rest of my goddamn life, you’re utterly mistaken,” he shouted, waking Mrs Black, his voice sailing over hers. “You have form, for this kind of thing, and you _knew_ I was unhappy with you and her anyway, you _knew_ , and I saw you both. It was not exactly a transitory little accident that you can pin on her. So don’t you fucking _dare_ talk about her, talk about _anything_. We will talk about this, inevitably, and you’ll grovel and I have no fucking delusions that I’ll forgive you, but I can’t at the moment, my family comes first. So until my family are safe, you can leave me the hell alone. This is your fault, James.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Bond yelled back. “Q, I’ve been trying to make this up to you for _weeks_ , do you not think this may be an overreaction?! I kissed her. I didn’t sleep with her, for Merlin’s sake…”

Q couldn’t breathe for a moment.

His voice lowered to a frankly lethal hiss. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t just hear that,” he said, with terrifying quiet. “You have _no right_ to tell me how to react. You selfish _fuck_. Is _everything_ somebody else’s fault?”

“I don’t…”

Q let out a strangled, ridiculous laugh. “I don’t know,” he cackled for an absurd moment, tone vitriolic. “You have an amazing ability to make _everything_ seem like somebody else’s fault. I’d love to hear the excuses for why you had your tongue down another person’s throat, but right now, I need to make sure my _brother_ doesn’t kill himself. I don’t want to hear from you. I don’t want to hear excuses, apologies, anything. I want you to respect me enough to know when to back the _fuck_ off. And Merlin help me, if I ever hear you try to tell me I’m _overreacting_ when my _husband_ kisses somebody like you did her, I swear I will never speak to you again, do I make myself _fucking_ clear?!”

Bond looked like he had been dealt a body blow. 

He was utterly silent.

“And you can shut up, for the love of Merlin,” Q screeched at Mrs Black; for the first time in anybody’s memory, she actually did as told.

The silence was eerie, unnatural.

Q sucked in air, feeling almost dizzy with the simple force of everything that had just transpired. 

Bond stared at him.

Q slammed out of Grimmauld Place, and Disapparated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and ideas and general AAAAing is always appreciated and cherished. Seriously. Jen.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not especially sober at the point of posting, so please feel free to highlight typos etc. I did check earlier. Still. Thank you, guys and dolls, as always. Jen.

For a moment, Q stood outside the Hogwarts gates, breathing. Just breathing. Feeling his own pulse and noting with wonder at the quickness of it, the rabbit-fast juddering, cracking by increments through a closed ribcage.

Never in his life had he been so angry.

It was difficult to focus, to think at all. Everything blurred in a frantic melee, hurt and anger and _want_ and grief and loss and guilt and pulsing hot terror that this was _it_ , that this was some break that would never heal.

A few moments, and everything began to clear a little, just a little.

Still controlled in a way he could barely begin to cover, Q strode into Hogwarts, through the mess of sludge and mud, the remnants of an autumn he was quickly forgetting. Students milled about in apologetic little huddles, looking cold and utterly wretched and mostly like they were up to no good. A distressingly large proportion were Slytherins, one group of which were Levitating sludge to aim at a collection of young-looking Hufflepuff and Ravenclaws.

Q took a moment to block the path of said clumps of sludge, Scourgify the wailing girls and petulant boys, and dock Slytherin ten points apiece – a good seventy altogether – before continuing up into the school.

The gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office was in animated conversation with a painting of a dog, but spared a moment to tell Q he looked like he needed a sandwich and a good sleep. Q muttered _lollipops_ at the thing, who promptly added that lollipops wouldn’t be too bad an idea either.

 _Merlin give me strength_ , Q thought violently to himself, and brushed past to the stairs up to Dumbledore’s office.

“Come in.”

Dumbledore’s voice always had a curiously melodic quality. Q remembered it from his earliest Hogwarts days; Dumbledore had a curious knack of instilling utter calm, regardless of situation or context. Just an utter, tranquil calm.

“Ah, Q,” he said brightly, upon seeing him. His expression sobered a little, a moment later. “Am I to assume Mr Bond and yourself are not yet reconciled?”

Q shook his head in a sharp, fractured motion. He couldn’t talk about it, not now. Not yet. “I… Albus, you’ve heard about Sherlock?”

Dumbledore’s expression contracted into one of profound sadness. “It is a greatly regrettable circumstance,” he murmured, with true compassion. “If I can be of any help, I would be glad.”

“He says it suppresses his magic,” Q explained, feeling almost pathetic, a young boy appealing to his Headmaster. It was an unassailable _belief_ ; Dumbledore could do anything. Even Mycroft was fallible – he was Q’s brother, after all – but Albus could defeat anybody, anything. Always.

Thus, Q came to him feeling like a child again, finding an adult he could trust and always depend on, a single figure he could place his belief and trust in. He was not the first, and would be far from the last, student to think of Albus Dumbledore in such a manner.

Dumbledore nodded slowly. “What is it you would like me to do?” he asked, quite calmly.

Q shrugged slightly, unable to quite express that he had no _idea_ what Dumbledore would do, could do. “You spoke to him, when he decided not to go to Hogwarts. About magic. He didn’t tell me much, but he trusted you, and what you said, it _helped_ at the time. He trusts you, and I don’t know whether it’ll do a damn thing but I’m out of ideas, nobody knows what to do with him or how to help him. It’s worth a try, quite honestly.”

Albus held up a single hand, and Q stilled, feeling tension drain slightly at the simple fact of somebody else having control of something, or at least _seeming_ to. “I will speak to him this evening,” Albus told him. “I do not know, as yet, whether it may help – but I am something of an expert in such matters, and I believe I may be able to give him some assistance.”

It was the single most promising thing Q had heard all year. “I don’t want to lose him,” Q admitted softly. “It’s just… this is not a good year, so far.”

“Indeed,” Albus murmured. “It is difficult. I believe it would be best if you remained at Hogwarts this evening, to rest; you may see Sherlock tomorrow evening, perhaps?”

Q nodded a little. He was utterly exhausted; the idea of heading back to Grimmauld Place was just abhorrent at that moment, given that Bond was still there, and Q honestly couldn’t promise he wouldn’t kill the man if he saw him just then.

“Be well, Q,” Albus told him, and Q left to crash out on his bed, asleep in a matter of moments.

-

The next day was not good.

Q was exhausted, angry, edged. He was ready to cause physical injury, and had absolutely no patience for anybody messing around in his classes. About forty students were put in detention, everybody had absurd amounts of homework, and Q couldn’t find anything above an Acceptable in any work he looked at all day.

By the time he got to Grimmauld Place that evening, he was really not in any type of joking mood. To his relief, Bond stayed a long way away from him – and, to his immense relief, Sherlock was showing the first signs of improvement since the drugs had been removed.

“Albus helped?” Q asked quietly, actually sitting in the kitchen for once; Sherlock had finally emerged from the black hole of his and John’s bedroom, ate an actual meal, making small moves towards socialisation outside of John, his brothers, and Molly.

Thus, he had headed out into the kitchen for a while. He bluntly refused to speak to Bond through utter indignation on Q’s behalf, but managed a somewhat stilted conversation with Remus and Tonks. Apparently, he found the concept of metamorphmagi fascinating.

Of course, he had yet to actually admit as much, but the simple fact of him sitting in a single location for an extended period and speaking about anything in the magical world was indicator enough. It was a start, and Q was frankly prepared to take any progress where it came, no matter how small.

Q began to wonder where, and how, Sherlock would begin to expend his magical energies. After all, there were realms of magic he would probably find very manageable; putting his energies into aspects like disguise, for example: concealment charms, various Magical devices to make him far more adept in his once-Muggle world of deduction and criminality.

Once again, Q had to acknowledge that he was deeply in Dumbledore’s debt. The man had done untold quantities for the Holmes family over the years.

The Holmes family, and indeed their various partners.

John had been in and out of St Mungo’s since being discharged, for various checkups; in their various testing, John had grown interested. The staff naturally had long-since been informed of John’s status as a Muggle with certain privileges – Q strongly suspected Dumbledore’s influence in that particular area – and were happy to engage in conversation with a man clearly absolutely fascinated by, and conversant in, all aspects of Healing.

Healers were, of course, in many regards more advanced than Muggle doctors. Mostly, it had to do with their resources; where Muggles used scalpels, Wizards used wands. Medicines and potions. The potions were more complex – but then, so were the illnesses. Wizard blood, wizarding influences, leaves the body susceptible to hosts of ailments that no Muggle could begin to suspect.

Quietly, John began to collate information. He asked questions, researched, explored.

A Healer took John under her wing, and began to teach him about every facet of the Healing world; naturally, John was absolutely entranced. She was not an Order member, nor did she know anything of John’s past or life other than that he was a Muggle with deep connections to the Wizarding world.

She also had the tact, the understanding, to not ask questions.

Q accompanied John on a visit to Mungo’s, a few days after everything had exploded with Bond; John despised Apparition with his entire being, and the charms around St Mungo’s were literal Muggle-deterrents. John couldn’t have found it if he’d tried.

Of the various Order members, nobody was more preferable than Q, mostly because he actually knew how to work the Tube. Remus and Kingsley were well-versed, but they were also almost always busy. Tonks was terrifyingly bad, Molly hated it, Irene had been unofficially excommunicated, and Mycroft was too busy being angry with Sherlock to deal properly with John.

It was a pleasure for Q to be able to feel useful, proactive, and yet not have to try and take on Sherlock when he knew perfectly well he would only be swallowed alive if he tried. He had learned as a teenager not to try and take on problems he was unequipped to handle.

Q and John slipped indoors, and the change in John was noticeable.

It was hard. John had become the primary stability and caregiver to a man who was entirely out of control, in a sense John could never truly understand, in a world that he didn’t actually belong to. Immersion in the Wizarding world was incredible, certainly, and John had learned more in a year or so in the Wizarding world than he had ever imagined he could.

The boredom had been immense, however. The itching, clawing desire to _get out_ , to use the skills he had at the tips of his fingers for more than pain potions to dose Q up with: to be able to have patients again, maybe. To see people, look after people, help people.

“Q, this is Molly Hooper,” John told him, gesturing to the Healer; she smiled shyly, extending a hand towards Q.

They hit it off instantly.

Molly was immensely quiet, but she was also incredibly intelligent and shockingly perceptive. John had explained that she often worked in the mortuary and in theoretical medicine – an area that crossed over heavily with John’s interests, unsurprisingly – and they were now working almost-together. John borrowed her knowledge of magic, and she his of Muggle medicine, and they were starting to find ways to splice the two.

It meant an extremely enjoyable evening parrying ideas. Q had little to add in terms of medical knowledge, but was a useful magic-muggle intermediary when terms were flown about that one or the other couldn’t understand. Q could give explanations, and otherwise watched as Molly’s fine-featured face crept into small laughs, smiles, and John finally looked a little less dead.

Q returned home to Grimmauld Place with John, and managed to spend an evening – again – with something resembling his brother.

Sherlock was not very well. It was transparently obvious; however, he seemed to be trying. “I’m assuming you haven’t killed anybody yet?” he asked John, tone drier than a desert plain. “Congratulations, John, you’re more indoctrinated than I am.”

“Don’t be a twat,” Q told him quickly, without too much vitriol; on the sliding scale of Sherlock’s insults, he was being surprisingly kind. Not to mention, he was barely making sense. “It’s lovely to hear the force of your personality has yet to be tempered.”

Unsurprisingly, Sherlock flicked him the finger; Q grinned, and John just looked between them with the weary smile of a mediator between two rather unruly children. He slid into the chair next to Sherlock, and let their fingers lace easily together, gentle twining.

Sherlock’s didn’t pull back. If anything, his fingers seemed to tighten a little, insistently keep John in place.

Less than twelve hours later, Sherlock had an all-out screaming match with his army doctor, lividly arguing that the man had no fucking right taking away his drugs, it was _his_ body to do with as he wished, there had never been a problem when he didn’t eat, why now, why now when I’m happy are you trying to take it away please _please_ …

Q left in time to see Sherlock retch into a sink, panicked and emotional out of all proportion, John holding onto him as the other man _screamed_ with naked want, degenerating into broken half-screams that seemed torn from him, and John remained carefully calm and just looped his arms in place, held onto Sherlock while he screamed himself raw, eventually exhausting himself and falling quiet, falling still. “I’m sorry,” he murmured to John.

It was, perhaps, one of the very first times Q had heard an apology tumble from Sherlock’s lips, unprompted, and sound utterly honest.

John glanced at Q, just once, and his lips crooked into an apology of a smile that broke Q’s heart a little. He loved Sherlock _so much_ , and the appalling thing was that Sherlock loved him too – he simply was too proud, too ridiculous and arrogant and _Sherlock_ to admit it.

Meanwhile, the Order had somewhat split over What To Do About Irene Adler.

Q wanted to rip her limb from limb, and take his time with it. To be honest, he considered even that something of a merciful fate.

Mycroft agreed, and more worryingly, had both means and immorality enough to actually go through with it. Sherlock was simply not allowed near her, or indeed Bond, given that he was likely to kill either at any given moment.

It was a difficult call; Irene was a nasty piece of work, but it had been Bond’s decision to be moronic.

The Order were a little split, but their loyalties lay with Bond and Q. Those who were attempting to offer support and look after Bond absolutely _loathed_ her – Remus, Filius, a couple of others – and entirely blamed her for the events that unfolded on New Year’s.

Everybody on Q’s side – which was essentially the rest of the Order – were split between who they hated, but given that Irene was a less known quantity than Bond (and was a manipulative little bitch to boot) they were hardly distressed at the possibility of her disappearance from Grimmauld Place.

Matters came to something of a head when Q and Irene found themselves in the same room, entirely by accident.

Q pushed open the door to the kitchen of Grimmauld Place.

From the outset, it was obvious that something was wrong; Molly’s expression was tighter than Q could ever recall seeing it, Fleur looked frankly horrified at Q’s entrance, Severus’s eyes were glinting in a way that did not bode overly well, and Q exhaled very slowly and realised a heartbeat too late quite what was causing the knife-edge tension.

Irene twisted to him, hair in an elegant swirl across her back, lips quirked in a smile that Q literally wanted to rip from her face. “Good evening,” she said, voice tumbling like water from red lips, eyes bright and sparklingly intelligent, body eloquent and lithe, and Q felt his hands inadvertently clench. “I am _so_ sorry for that little problem at New Year, I hope you can forgive me.”

For a moment, Q literally was ready to pounce. If it were not for Mycroft’s entrance to the Grimmauld Place kitchen, there would have been a decent probability of Molly needing to clear Irene’s desiccated corpse from the kitchen floor.

There was nothing Q wanted to say to her, and so he didn’t waste breath; he took a breath, turned to Molly, began talking to her in a tone that informed her that she needed to keep him occupied.

Meanwhile, Mycroft took Irene away for a little chat.

Nobody knew what transpired during that ‘chat’.

Nobody ever would.

Irene left shortly afterwards, and Mycroft found himself near enough knocked over by Q’s resultant hug; Q breathed out slowly, thanking everything he could think of for giving him a brother like Mycroft, and even like Sherlock. The latter was relatively useless with practicalities, but could rant like nobody in the world when set running on a topic – and nothing was more pertinent than the safety of his younger brother.

Q felt ridiculously looked after, which was a little odd when an adult, but not something that ever really grew old.

“I have spoken to Albus,” Mycroft told him, in a level voice. “In the circumstances, he has agreed that she will not be in or around Grimmauld Place. She will still be working for the Order, but if we are fortunate, she will not darken your particular doorstep again.”

“Thank you,” Q replied, very simply.

Sherlock glanced over Mycroft with an unfathomable expression, just for a moment. Just for a heartbeat longer than normal, a little more time to read and breathe and accept everything that Mycroft was.

Sherlock being Sherlock, he never showed anything but contempt for Mycroft, on a usual basis.

Something in the light of recent events, something with Q and with Mycroft and with a post drug-addled haze and with John and with a life gradually beginning to make a touch more sense due to a collection of other people’s interference – something, _something_ , had impacted.

Q would always wonder what Albus had said that evening, to get through to Sherlock. Perhaps he had experience with Wizarding problems, knowledge of misused magic and suppression, the interplay of emotion and pain and magic and intelligence.

The one thing Albus Dumbledore had always known was the importance of the subtler and most powerful magics in the world.

Mycroft glanced back at Sherlock for another strange heartbeat, Q watching with an odd sense of suspension, as though some ball would drop and the shouting would begin, and instead there was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Quiet, and an expression that almost passed for acceptance and another of forgiveness, and Q could literally witness the shift.

“Come on,” John said quietly, reaching to Sherlock, shattering a moment he hadn’t realised existed. “We need to eat, and Q, James is angling so you may want to head back.”

Sherlock’s grin turned frightening. “Or I can scare him off…”

“It’s fine,” Q said, with a slightly tired smile. “I should go back, I have classes in the morning. The travelling’s killing me as it is, I hadn’t realised how hard it is Apparating that much.”

“Are you taking your potions?”

Q lied easily, knew Mycroft and indeed Sherlock had seen straight through him, and promptly exited before he was drawn into a conversation he simply didn’t want to have.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed, please comment if you have the inclination! Jen.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay - for anybody who is not aware of this particular life truism, never work retail at Christmas. It is the very fastest way to wave goodbye to your sanity. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy! Jen.

It occurred to Q, repeatedly, that he _really_ needed to conduct a civilised conversation with James at some stage. Festering in his own anger would achieve absolutely nothing, after all, and he did still love his husband, even if he was a bloody idiot.

The red mist was, gradually, receding.

Q sighed out slightly, and moved to his desk, pulling out the Everlasting Sugar Quill Bond had given him on his first morning of teaching at Hogwarts. The thing was very much true to its word, and was still persistently staying gorgeously sweet and a glorious distraction when penning difficult letters.

Like a letter to one’s husband, telling him that he wanted to meet up properly, on some form of neutral territory, to discuss what to do in their relationship from thereon in.

A slow sigh, and he attached the parchment to Scamander’s leg. “Don’t be mean, this is calling a truce,” Q told him firmly, given that Scamander was liable to possessively eat people who weren’t nice to his wizard. “If he doesn’t give you a treat though, he’s all yours.”

Scamander hooted with satisfaction, and took off out the window.

Q reached for his phone. _Have sent a letter to James, beware the impending chaos, he’ll probably ask you for advice. Tell him nothing. I want him to explain himself without any external influences._

Sherlock’s suitably acerbic reply returned less than a minute later, in a pure testament to his texting speed. _Naturally. Do not allow poor excuses. The Woman is devious in the extreme, but that cannot be his reasoning for a betrayal. SH_

Q rolled his eyes a little at Sherlock’s habit of signing off texts, despite the fact that everybody on the earth had caller ID these days.

_Thank you for your support._

A heartbeat later, the reply arrived.

_Don’t be an idiot, it doesn’t suit you. John sends his regards, and says to ‘give him hell’. Do inform me of the outcome. SH_

Q laughed a little; it had been gratifying, the fact that everybody was near enough unanimously in Q’s corner, insofar as Bond’s behaviour went. Mundungus Fletcher – hardly the pinnacle of morality – had argued, along with Remus at one brief stage, that Bond was deeply repentant and Q was overreacting.

Nobody really dared present that option to Q, who was acutely aware that he probably _was_ overreacting, but it was difficult to be rational when he had seen his _husband_ kiss another woman _in public_. In front of him, in fact.

As time passed, the anger was getting more manageable. It didn’t hurt any less, not in the slightest, but it was his _husband_ , and he deserved a chance to – at least – explain.

Scamander arrived back in the space of half an hour, with a hastily scrawled agreement from Bond; it came with the full volley of apologies Q had expected, and he didn’t bother to read through in full. 

It was ridiculously, impossibly comforting to see Bond’s writing. Despite everything, Q missed him like nothing he could begin to express. Their shouting match lingered heavily in the back of Q’s mind, but running away was just not an option. Sherlock was approaching something like stability, and Q had said that he would speak to Bond when his family were safe.

Hogsmeade. Neutral territory. Somewhere that they didn’t have the scope to row without it being extremely humiliating, and extremely public, something neither party relished the idea of.

Thus, Q was found settled at a table in the Hog’s Head behind a monstrously large glass of Butterbeer, waiting. It was freezing outside, the bitterness of early February; Valentine’s Day was approaching with nauseating speed, and Q honestly wanted to deal with Bond before such holidays were upon them.

It was almost impossible to know what to think, far less what to do. It rested on what Bond said now, how they reacted to one another, whether Q could get over his own insecurities and whether Bond could convince him that it would never happen again.

Precisely on the hour, the door opened to allow Bond in.

Q looked up at him, didn’t wave. He pushed forward a Firewhiskey however, wordlessly, waiting for Bond to sit down.

“Hi,” Bond said quietly, sliding into the booth opposite. “How’re you doing, Q?”

For a moment, Q just looked at him, trying to take in every line of him, trying to observe like his brother could do _so well_ , seeing what he thought, how he had been, trying to deduce everything about him in a series of glances and he bloody _couldn’t_ , no matter how hard he tried.

“I’m okay,” he said instead, in lieu of anything else. “And you?”

Bond smiled very slightly, very sadly. “I’ve been better,” he admitted, blue eyes bright and bleak. “I’ve missed you. I…”

Q had never seen Bond quite so obviously torn apart. Bond dealt with pain through displacement: anger, revenge, passion. Active, immediate types of emotion, easily managed and eventually dissipated.

He didn’t usually become passive, become almost defeated in his expression, his posture. He seemed to have deflated in some way since Q had last seen him, and finally, the fabled Holmesian deductive skills blessed Q with some form of insight: Bond had realised he could not fix anything, and thus, his pain had nowhere to go. It festered, lingered, expanded.

Honestly, it was difficult to feel overwhelmingly _sympathetic_ , per se. It didn’t stop the instinctive pain that Q felt, the link he had always shared with Bond, the inability to watch the other hurting without desperately wanting to heal it.

“I’ve missed you too,” Q told him softly, honestly. “Merlin. I just… James, _why_? I know you didn’t… didn’t mean it, not as anything deliberate or cruel, but you know? That almost makes it worse. You didn’t even think about it, it just _happened_ , and that’s… that’s hard.”

Bond nodded. “I know,” he said frankly. “I can’t pretend I thought about it, it wasn’t premeditated, there never has – and never will be – anything further, with anybody. It was just stupidity, thoughtlessness. Please, Q.”

Q snorted slightly, not too harshly. “What would you like me to say? That I forgive you, and that’s that?”

“Come home,” Bond asked softly, tentatively.

Q’s breath snatched. “Give me a reason,” he returned quietly. “For you not doing it again, I mean.”

Bond was utterly silent, looking quite honestly terrified. Of a misstep, of a wrong word or an idiotic action, of making a situation he would regret for the rest of his life even worse than he already had. “I’ve never given you a reason to distrust me before,” he managed eventually, slowly, carefully. “I was…”

Q cut over him as words finally spilled, without real intent or real conscious thought, just a final release of the words he had been avoiding saying: “I’m scared I’m not enough for you”. 

Voicing the constant fear, the one thing that had plagued him since the earliest days of knowing his James Bond, the simple truism that underpinned everything without Q having really been aware until _this moment_ , until trying to fix a break that went further than a kiss or a row.

James Bond was an ex-Ministry body, from the Auror office. Beautiful, and known for his ability to seduce everybody and everything. Perfect body, perfect voice, intelligent. Q had barely been able to believe his luck when the man walked through the door; it seemed too outlandish to be believable, that James Bond could possibly have even a passing interest.

Over time, Q had become used to the idea that maybe, just maybe, Bond really did love him enough to overlook what Q saw as his massive failings, as compared to his now-husband.

The fear never quite went away, however. Q clung to Bond every second he could, just because he couldn’t help the feeling that it could end at any moment. That Bond would realise he had made a phenomenal mistake, and would be gone before Q could utter a syllable.

Bond was around the table and in Q’s booth before Q could manage to protest, cupping Q’s chin very gently, lifting it slightly so Q was looking into his husband’s eyes. “I will never be worth you,” he said simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and to him it _was_ , but Q couldn’t see it for the life of him and Bond already knew he probably never would. “Q. You are everything, and I will regret what happened until the day until the day I die, because _Merlin_ , you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I can’t believe I’ve thrown away…”

He broke off a moment, looking a little overwhelmed for one of the first times in Q’s memory, hand falling from Q’s face loosely as he reclaimed himself by quiet increments. Q didn’t help him, just watched for a moment, feeling slightly sick, if he was being honest with himself.

The quiet was pervasive, uncomfortable. Neither could recall a point where they had felt so incorrect in one another’s presence, when contact had been so laboured or so stilted, and Q took control where he could because he needed to, on this.

“James,” Q said, with a quiet steadiness. “I love you. I couldn’t stop loving you if I tried. There is nothing you can say that will make this better, but honestly? I need to trust you. And at the moment, that’s not an easy thing to do.”

“I know,” Bond replied quickly, tripping over himself. “I…”

Q held a hand up, placing an elegant finger on Bond’s lips. “James, I’m going to trust you,” he said, the words weighted and impossibly important. “You are my husband, and I love you. I’m still angry, and it still hurts. You need to know that, I’m not going to pretend otherwise. That’s probably the worst of all of this, you know. It’s not up to you to make it better, in a way, because I’m the one who needs to let you when Merlin knows I don’t actually want to right now.”

Bond was stiller than Q had known another human could be, a marble monument, waiting for the axe to fall and watching Q with an intensity that was truly not helping his now notable nausea. “I have to trust you, and I’m going to,” he said after a moment, the factual nature of it sinking in a little. “Don’t do this again, James. I don’t think I have a repeat performance in me.”

Bond let out a long breath, his body falling away with his breath, leaving him looking immensely small, almost pathetic. “I’m so sorry,” Bond repeated, so strangely uncertain of himself, making Q smile a little. James Bond, awkward. It was an unforgettable type of moment.

“You’re an idiot,” Q told him frankly, and slid closer, resting his head on Bond’s shoulder and letting the other man close arms around him with impossible care.

Q smiled, breathed in Bond’s warmth, silent tears sliding down his cheeks at the sheer relief of tension. The familiarity, the protection that Bond exuded; it had been one hell of a month, with Sherlock in pieces and nobody really there, Q wishing for Bond, anger flying out like missiles because there was no other way to deal with anything.

Now, Bond rubbed soothing circles over his back, warm palms gliding over shoulder blades, hushing him, letting him ride out the hurt of a month of chaos, a month without the one person who could usually be depended on to be Q’s rock, when everything was falling apart.

Bond, in turn, clung onto Q like a drowning man to oxygen. He knew how close he had come to losing Q altogether; maybe, if things had been different, if Sherlock had been well and work wasn’t stressful, it would have been easier to cope with. Maybe it wouldn’t have been. Bond had gambled – through nothing more than idiocy and, admittedly, ego – the most important thing in his life.

He didn’t deserve Q. He didn’t deserve somebody who loved him enough to trust him, despite having no reason to. He knew that, more acutely than he could voice, and the guilt was almost overwhelming.

So, Bond just buried his nose in Q’s hair, and kept him tight to his chest, as though he could disappear any moment, as he finally realised and finally understood that Q _could_.

-

Q went back with Bond to Grimmauld Place; it was a Saturday, and Albus – presumably through some sort of psychic capacity – had arranged it so Q had a full free weekend, barring his usual marking. 

He had met with Bond on the Saturday morning, after accompanying a batch of students to Hogsmeade, given that he was going there anyway.

Once both had composed themselves a little more, Bond took Q’s hand, and they Apparated to Grimmauld Place, and closed the door a little too loudly; Mrs Black tried to start yelling, but took one look at Q, and promptly shut her mouth again, meekly letting the curtains shut again.

Bond raised an eyebrow. “That’s truly impressive,” he commented quietly, looking at Mrs Black with mild suspicion. “How did you manage that?”

“I think it was the shouting that did it,” Q shrugged, noting Bond’s mild flinch at the mention of their disastrous row in the entrance corridor. “I’m not arguing. I think I’m the first person in years to manage that feat, I’m quite proud of myself.”

The pair were met with wide grins when they entered the kitchen. Sherlock scanned the pair up and down, and rolled his eyes slightly before turning back to the book he was apparently engrossed in.

John stood, extending a hand to Bond. “Sorry,” he said, as a general blanket term to cover the fact that he had barely spoken to Bond since the New Year row (as it quickly became known).

“I deserved it,” Bond admitted, quite freely. John shrugged slightly, and Sherlock let out a slightly disparaging noise.

Q moved to his side, looking over his shoulder at the book: _Introduction to Practical Concealment_. Not surprising, really. “Be nice to James now, Sherlock,” he muttered in his brother’s ear. “We’re dealing with it.”

“I hope you are both aware that should this happen again, I will utilised my newfound capabilities to potentially damaging effect,” Sherlock drawled at him, glancing at him for an acid-sharp and breathtakingly quick instant.

Q nodded. “Good,” Sherlock said, with a truly unnerving smile in Bond’s direction, and went straight back to his usual habit of ignoring everybody in favour of his work.

His wand could be seen, a slim silhouette against his chest, and Sherlock’s expression hardened as he realised Q had seen.

A brief look away, and Q’s eyes sought Bond again, confirmation, and it was surprisingly difficult to accept that nothing was going to back to normal. The shift was profound and undeniable, and Q let out a slow sigh, and let his eyes trace over his husband carefully, letting the paranoia rise and fade and hopefully, hopefully _soon_ , die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a tricksy little chapter, I'd love to hear your thoughts if you have the time, or indeed inclination. Jen.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoy, dearies. Nearly Christmas! Jen.

Bond was really taking the idea of ‘attachment’ to new extremes; he literally didn’t leave Q alone, watching him carefully every instant he wasn’t actually holding onto the man. It was half endearing and half bizarre, but Q humoured it. He had missed the physical contact, more than anything else. The ability to curl up with somebody, be kissed, cherished, just _held_. To feel the warmth of another human being.

“Are you staying tonight?” Bond asked quietly, almost nervously, as though broaching the subject was somehow a bad idea.

Q glanced over him, and – to his own surprise – shook his head, very slightly. “Just, give it a bit of time?” he asked quietly.

Bond would have given him near enough anything. He nodded, visibly crushed, and Q schooled himself: he had to do what was best for himself, in all of this, or there would be no relationship left in a very short space of time.

Whisp circled Q’s ankles, a bright shade of blue, a perfect mimic of Bond’s eye colour. “Astute little thing, aren’t you?” Q crooned, scooping his cat into his arms, keeping her carefully cradled against his chest. She miaowed plaintively, nuzzling into Q’s elbow. “Yes, yes, I missed you too. I’ve only been gone a few days, you ridiculous thing.”

“She claws me half to death whenever I try to go near,” Bond admitted, looking at the thing with extreme distrust. “She’s your cat through and through.”

“Yes, yes you are,” Q crooned, stroking the top of her hair gently. “James is a friend again now, you can be nice to him. Oh, did Scamander bully you, by the way?”

Bond looked somewhat less than impressed. “Of course he did. I had to actually heal one of the nips to my wrist, I think he nearly split a damned artery,” he said, with a very disgruntled tone. “I don’t know how you do it, Q. Animal tamer in a past life.”

“Clearly,” Q laughed, as Whisp purred outrageously loudly. “Couldn’t put a kettle on, could you? Could murder a cup of tea.”

Bond smiled, flicked his wand a few times, and caught Q’s lips in a very light, very brushed kiss. Just a little thing, not pushing anything too far, not yet. Q nodded his appreciation at Bond’s restraint, encouraging him that it was fine, and it was just taking a little time. It would be fine.

He held onto Bond’s hand, thumb brushing over Bond’s wedding ring, and smiled quietly to himself while Sherlock started on a small tirade about the book he was reading, John laughed for the first time in a long while. It was nice to see, as well, the small exchanges between John and Sherlock that had been notably absent since before even Sherlock’s drug problem was found.

Tonks arrived quite late in the evening, looking exhausted, but her hair a furry fluorescent halo of pink. “Oh, fantastic!” she said delightedly, brightening at the sight of Bond and Q holding hands once again. “Remus and I were talking about you both, he’ll be so happy…”

Bond looked at Q with a type of quiet wonder, as though unable to believe the man was there, had come back, despite Bond’s honest terror that he wouldn’t. “When’s he back?” Q asked lightly.

“Couple of days, he’s talking to some of the werewolf packs,” Tonk explained, sounding deeply unhappy about the prospect; Whisp, meanwhile, all but leapt at her ankles. “Hello,” she laughed, as Whisp mimicked her.

Q rolled his eyes. “That cat is a total tart. I feed her, look after her, but then you come along and I’m no longer needed,” he said, with a deliberately dramatic sigh. Gratifyingly, Whisp seemed to listen, and begrudgingly moved back to settle on Q’s lap, looking relatively affronted, and turning an obnoxious shade of purple as revenge.

At about one, Bond and Q turned in for the night, the latter yawning widely. It had been a pretty exhausting day, overall, not to mention that Q’s chest was killing him; he headed to the door, Mrs Black watching him with disconcerting silence and causing Tonks to stare unapologetically, mouth open.

Q grinned, and shrugged slightly, Bond following him outside to say goodbye, still reluctant to take his eyes off Q for even a moment. “Q…”

“Don’t,” Q said quickly. “I don’t want to talk about it any more. Just… I’ve missed you. I just want to forget about it for a bit, and enjoy being back with you, yes?”

A small nod. “I love you,” Bond told him, voice low, slightly thick, folding Q back into his arms. “It’s late, Q. Just sleep here, tonight? Go back in the morning. It’s a Sunday, you could do with a more relaxed day.”

Q squeezed his hand slightly, Bond falling quieter, and Q tried to assess the situation and decided that really, common sense be _damned_ , he just wanted to be with his husband for a while. 

He had missed Bond _so much_.

Their room was familiar and warm, and Bond had tidied everything with ex-Ministry neuroticism, which was both endearing and a little bizarre. Q pulled them closer to the bed, making a small noise of satisfaction as Bond obediently lay down, and let Q rest across his chest. 

Q had a particular spot, just below Bond’s shoulder, almost directly over his heart, that he fitted in; Bond’s arms wrapped around him perfectly, and he could curl against Bond’s body, and every part of him was guarded.

He didn’t notice falling asleep, fully clothed, in Bond’s arms.

-

Q woke up, and for an absurd moment, couldn’t work out what in the world was going on.

Bond’s arms were around him, he had somehow ended up under the covers, and in a pair of pyjamas he didn’t recognise. “Morning,” Bond’s voice murmured in his ear.

Q yawned, burrowed closer to him. It was deliciously, impossibly warm. “What’m I doing here?”

“Sleeping, if I’m not very much mistaken,” Bond teased gently, pushing hair out of Q’s face. “You were out like a light. I managed to undress, redress, and get you properly into bed without you noticing. I’m quite impressed.”

Toast. There was toast somewhere. “Sunday, yes?” Q asked, very unwilling to peel himself away from Bond’s side, but acutely aware that he was going to start gnawing on the man’s forearm if he didn’t get some food soon. He smiled slightly at Bond’s nod. “Good. Like Sundays. M’hungry.”

Bond kissed the top of his head, and started to slide away. “I’ll bring it up. Breakfast in bed. Sound good?”

“I have missed you, James Bond,” Q mumbled, and felt himself sink back into a doze. “Toast. Lots of toast. Porridge. Y’know, anything with carbs. Absolutely anything. ‘kay?”

Bond snorted, and disappeared out the door. He seemed to be back about half a second later, by Q’s estimations, given that he had gone straight back off to sleep the moment Bond left the room. “Q, wake up,” Bond laughed, sitting on the edge of the bed, keeping the tray lazily levitated until Q sat up properly. He hovered it over, letting Q pluck it out of the air, and carefully rest it on his knees. “Everything in the kitchen with carbohydrates. Enjoy.”

Q literally purred, grasping for a cream cheese bagel with one hand, a stupendously large mug of tea in the other. “ _Oh_ ,” he mumbled obscenely. “Merlin, this is good. Molly or John?”

“John,” Bond replied, snagging a plate of eggs and bacon for himself. “Molly’s at the Burrow for a few days, Arthur’s got time off. Sherlock’s down there too.”

Q’s eyes widened. “Please tell me he wasn’t trying to cook?!”

“Mercifully not,” Bond snorted, and took a massive mouthful of egg. “Anyway. When do you want to head back?”

Q shrugged, moving onto toast, slugging back his tea like a professional. “Probably midday-ish? I really do need to do some marking, or I’ll get ridiculously behind, and I’m on the rota for nighttime patrols this week…”

“I thought Albus exempted you?” Bond asked, clearly confused. “John’s said you haven’t been picking up your potions, either…”

“Don’t,” Q interrupted sharply. “Please.”

A raised eyebrow, and a distinct darkening of Bond’s expression. “Q?”

It was way too early in the morning to be evasive, or indeed start a row. “I’ve stopped taking them. I don’t want to be dependent on them forever, and with everything going on…”

“Pain potions are not the same as heroin,” Bond commented drily.

Q shot him a slightly acerbic look. “I know,” he returned. “Look, I’m fine. I’m being careful about it. I had one yesterday, and I’m still taking them when it’s really bad. Please, just trust me on this one.”

It was a little manipulative on Q’s part to ask for trust, in the light of recent events and _especially_ while lying himself, but he couldn’t admit to being very repentant. “Okay,” Bond said, evidently still unhappy about it. “Just be careful, please?”

Q leaned in, and kissed him. “I will be,” he murmured against Bond’s lips, and relaxed a little, incrementally, a month feeling like it had vanished overnight, the familiar sensation of Bond’s warmth and taste, easy intimacy.

He pulled back, grabbed at another piece of toast, Bond unable to suppress a smile as he managed to eat a whole slice of buttered toast in five bites.

-

Hogwarts seemed brighter, in the light of everything outside it. Q was more prepared to give students slack, to calm down a little more, to be a little more himself and enjoy the usual atmosphere of Hogwarts.

Minerva and the other ladies of Hogwarts were absolutely delighted that Bond and Q had made up again. Pomona actually threw an impromptu party, which culminated in Q introducing Aurora to Earl Grey – she very nearly vomited – and everybody chasing after an errant Chocolate Frog who seemed impervious to Summoning Charms.

Q volunteered to assist on the Apparation lessons the following weekend. All of the Heads of House would be attending, but extra manpower was always useful, when the Great Hall would be filled with hoops and an entire Hogwarts year. First-time Apparating could also be a rather frightening prospect, with a decent number of splinches; Q had only splinched once, and never let his concentration slide ever again.

He also passed the test first time. Bond didn’t pass until his third. It was one of Q’s happily smug achievements.

It was a decent lesson; one splinch, as expected, and a hilarious number of twirling hops into hoops. Mass mocking also occurred.

Draco Malfoy was clearly up to something with his thuggish compatriots; Q tried to move closer, in the hope of hearing. In doing so, he noticed Potter doing the precise same thing, not especially subtly.

Q caught Potter’s eye, and just raised an eyebrow. 

Flushing slightly, Potter retreated again.

It was difficult to glean much from Malfoy; the emergency of Potter made him very wary indeed, attention abruptly focusing on his hoop that he was – supposedly – meant to Apparating into.

He didn’t even try a generalised spin. He simply stared at the hoop, expression completely blank, as though he would get there by sheer force of will, and absolutely nothing else. Q came closer, watching over him carefully. “Try a turn,” he murmured at Draco; the man looked up, expression deeply suspicious. “You are committed to the destination, to your ability to get there. Now breathe in, breathe out – and turn.”

Malfoy raised an imperious eyebrow, and utterly ignored him.

Q moved away again, glancing over other students, looking back in time to see Draco Malfoy breathe out, turn, and materialise just past the parameters of his hoop. Immensely, brilliantly close. “Take twenty for Slytherin,” Q called at him, and was graced with a very slight, minimal smile.

It was something, at least.

Q went back to teaching with considerably more joy, and finally read the Arithmancy tome Bond had given him the preceding Christmas; he adored the book, and the limited edition version had extra chapters and appendices. It was brilliant.

Meanwhile, the telephone concept was going beautifully; he could now happily contact Grimmauld Place, on a secure line, without Wizarding interference. He had even eliminated the static.

On a quieter basis – without telling Bond, for example, given that he would be livid – he had started exploring Muggle munitions properly. Sherlock’s Beretta had died a rather unusual death while Q tried to amend the mechanism, and thus he had left the matter alone for a little while, busying himself in less destructive concepts.

Usually, wizards could use various jamming spells that would damage the mechanisms; however, Shield Charms were not enough to stop bullets. There were specific spells one needed to use, targeting the gun, the bullets themselves. Simple spells, but few knew how, or which to use.

And if Q could find a way of making guns impervious to Wizarding interference, a very new form of Wizarding warfare could be formed. In the potential light of an all-out war with You-Know-Who and his supporters, it was vitally important that the Order had ways to fight that nobody could expect, and might just be enough to save lives.

It had been sourcing a gun that was very difficult indeed, especially when trying make sure that Bond didn’t find out; Q didn’t really want to risk John’s Browning, given that John was quite fond of it, and so eventually just managed to steal one from a Muggle gang in Central London.

Which was how Q wound up with a Glock, and an Uzi sub-machine gun, on his desk.

Q stared at them for a very, very long while.

He put them in his wardrobe, and ignored them for a bit, deciding to feel a little bit virtuous for managing to get the guns off London streets, at least. They upset him, quite frankly, in a relatively instinctive way that was partially born of being in a world where the most dangerous weapons were simply wands. Wooden, elegant, very beautiful.

These were heavy, oily metal contraptions. Far less beautiful, less deft, and yet equally lethal.

A slight shiver, and Q didn’t think about them for a little while, choosing instead to chuck himself onto his bed and dive into a new biography of Alexia Mudworth, a very famed Herbologist whom Q had followed avidly in his teenage years.

About an hour later, he lifted himself out of bed, and moved to his desk; he waved at the window, letting it fly open to allow Scamander inside from his nightly hunt. “Hello,” he said lightly, smiling at him. “I just need you to run this up to Dumbledore.”

He scrawled a quick note, attached it to Scamander’s leg; Scamander waited until he had been fed an Owl Treat, nipped Q affectionately, and took flight.

The reply came through relatively quickly: Q was welcome in Dumbledore’s office whenever he wished, but advised Q that he was going to be out of the castle for the next couple of weeks from the morning onwards.

Q, therefore, headed up immediately. He murmured ‘ _sugar mice_ ’ to the gargoyle, who let him through quite happily, and Q tapped on the door to Dumbledore’s office. “Come in.”

Dumbledore’s office was a perpetual surprise; a collection of spindly-looked devices, all manner of Wizarding contraptions that Q barely recognised, a pensieve, Fawkes. “What can I do for you?” Dumbledore asked warmly, indicating the chair opposite.

Q sat, taking a breath, and placing the mobile phone on Dumbledore’s desk.

To Q’s surprise, Dumbledore’s smile – if anything – widened. “Excellent,” he said happily. “I had heard rumour of your work with Muggle technology. I take it this cannot be interrupted by Wizarding frequencies?”

“No. You can contact anybody else who has an amended phone, and it should be unhackable,” Q explained, with a dash of pride. “Potentially very useful in general contact between Order members.”

There was something immensely inspiring about being able to make Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world, smile. Q felt himself swallow slightly, eyes a little wide, Albus’s eyes twinkling while Q remained oddly still. “A truly superb innovation,” Dumbledore told him, and Q felt his entire chest open, oxygen flooding in. “This is, perhaps, the most important innovation the Order have had in a while.”

The portraits around the walls watched with variable expressions; some looked immensely proud, pleased. Of course, Nigellus looked a little contemptuous, but that was practically expected.

“If you can manage to replicate this on a larger scale…”

Q nodded quickly. “They each take a fair bit of time, but I could manage a couple a week,” he explained. “I’m also looking at whether we can use the Internet, computer systems from the Muggle world, to our advantage. Again, transference of information, plans, blueprints; if we can make them destruct, fuse magic and Muggle technology…”

Dumbledore was outright _grinning_ , with the excitement of a child. “If you are able to implement this, Q…”

Quickly, Q nodded. “I can’t guarantee anything,” he said carefully, “but I think it’s an avenue to explore…”

“Well,” Albus said, eyes twinkling. “I think we can safely establish, with these types of innovations, that you are the Order’s first real quartermaster. Thank you, Q.”

Q nodded, not bothering to suppress his own smile. “My pleasure,” he managed, feeling like a schoolchild who had just passed a form of major test, excitement and adrenaline coursing through his body, unstoppable and breathtaking in intensity.

He was still grinning like an idiot when he got back to his rooms, and texted Bond to tell him the news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are splendid, if you're willing! Take care. Jen.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Still on hiatus, this was written in advance, posted up by Lex on Jen's behalf. Thank you guys :)

Valentine’s Day dawned bright and cold, and Q woke, heart thumping in his throat; Bond was coming into Hogsmeade to see him, just to share a drink. Bond was busy with Order work for the most part, which was preventing them seeing as much of each other. Having a chance to share a pleasant few hours was certainly welcome, especially in the light of the previous month.

Bond smiled like an idiot when he saw Q. Madame Rosmerta had allowed them to take over one of the back rooms, to keep Bond out of the way, and allow them to have a quiet evening. She had even managed to find candles, and really, had gone all-out.

Q settled with a type of indeterminate cocktail that Madame Rosmerta had never once revealed the recipe of, and talked to Bond for a while. He was absolutely _delighted_ with everything Q was doing for the Order; Q was very excited himself, constantly pouring out ideas and concepts, what had worked, what hadn’t.

There was a strain there, though. Some intangible thing, clouding the way they spoke, looked at one another. Bond was so desperate to make everything work, and Q couldn’t quite make his smile work fully, not yet. He was trying, but progress came in fits and starts, and memory was an unfortunate thing.

After a while, Bond had to go back; Q headed out after him, watched him Disapparate, and trudged back up the classroom.

Nothing much of interest occurred for a lovely, peaceful fortnight. Classes ticked onwards – Q drowning in work, now he was busy with Order business – and actually, they seemed to be going well. His students were efficient and hard-working, and barring a few annoyances in class, he somehow avoided anything truly chaotic.

It was due to be the last few weeks of calm, of course. OWLs and NEWTs were approaching; Ginny Weasley and Luna were among his students due to take the exam, and he intentionally insured that there was a general aura of calm. Stress would inevitably build, but it didn’t need to just yet.

Of course, that lasted until the moment Ron Weasley managed to get poisoned, in Slughorn’s office, of all places.

The stories were everywhere, rumours and frankly idiotic theories. The teachers established the truth relatively quickly, from Horace: Ron had somehow been slipped a love potion, hence his being in Horace’s office, along with Harry.

Q sighed slightly; somehow, all the problems in the entire _school_ seemed to somehow involve Harry.

Either way: Horace had made up an antidote, Ron had seemingly recovered. After that, they were about to share a glass of mead, and upon the first sip, Ron had convulsed. Had it not been for an extremely prompt reaction from Harry, Ron would probably have died.

It was a terrifying prospect. Hogwarts was supposed to be safe, and – quite obviously – it was not, at present. 

The teachers were all on high-alert for anything and everything that could pose a danger to the student populace: in practise, a _lot_. While Filch was very happy using relatively intrusive devices to detect Dark items on students, there was still a lot that could get in and out of the castle without anybody being any the wiser. Some of the students – and certainly the teachers – were very innovative, very _good_ , wizards. If any single one wanted to cause havoc, they could probably manage it.

Q found himself scanning students with relative frequency, wand moving in gentle motions to simply see whether there was anything concealed. That, of course, led to a host of problems in and of itself: while some students had simply nicked a quill, one of the sixth-years had stashed a box of condoms into the bottom of his bag which – unsurprisingly – he had made every single effort to hide.

It could have been worse, Q mused, and sent the utterly humiliated sixth-year back on his way, with the warning that while owning protection was laudable, it was technically forbidden to have sex in the dormitories.

Term ticked along. A few weeks after the Ron Weasley incident, Gryffindor lost a Quidditch match in spectacular style, mostly due to the moronic actions of McLaggen; Q remembered him from Slughorn’s dinners, and his general fondness for the boy had not even vaguely increased.

Potter wound up with a cracked skull, and Luna Lovegood – after some truly _glorious_ commentary – became the school’s pride and joy. At least, as far as all but the Slytherins were concerned, but they never really liked anybody, so the point was somewhat moot.

Easter arrived, with an influx of chocolate; Q headed back to Grimmauld Place for the weekend, to be given chocolate eggs the size of his torso by no fewer than four different people; Bond’s won, because it was soppily romantic and Q couldn’t quite bring himself to dislike the man for it, but Tonks and Whisp very nearly beat him with a _colour-changing egg_. Q had no idea how they’d done it, but the bloody Easter Egg changed colour.

It made him giggle like a small child, quite honestly.

Actually, everybody seemed to have gone a little overboard with Easter Egg designs – at least, between the adult members. Q had been a little preoccupied with his newfound quartermaster duties, but Bond had happily filled his time with creating a chocolate-fountain form of Easter Egg which was definitely new, and quite a lot of fun.

Sherlock was casting spells, on an almost-regular basis. He had decided to focus in on Charms, Transfiguration; all the types of magic that he could use for his own purposes, anything that could make him _feel_ less magic. Q would watch him, his wand dangling loosely in long fingers, eyes utterly dead as he levitated items, went through the earliest stages of Hogwarts teaching in fast-forward and didn’t even try to pretend it wasn’t killing him.

“It’s a means to an end,” Q told him softly; Sherlock was sat on the sofa in the main living room, watching a book flick open and shut at his behest.

Sherlock looked at him with something like hate, something like pain. It didn’t suit him; Sherlock was never somebody to own that kind of hurt, it was _wrong_ , utterly and intrinsically so, and it made Q’s skin crawl, a shivering sense up his spine that refused to entirely leave.

It is difficult, as a child, to imagine that one’s parents are fallible. That anybody you respect or love or care for is fallible.

Sherlock was fighting to survive, simply because his mind worked differently, and nobody knew how to fix it.

Q had always been a child to them, even when Sherlock was at his worst, even when Mycroft was absent or busy, or the single time Q had walked into Mycroft’s office unannounced, and seen his brother cry. Q was the one who was never supposed to see, certainly never supposed to be affected.

Siblings could be utterly idiotic.

It was oddly easy, actually, to simply sit next to Sherlock, and curl up against him.

True, Sherlock looked somewhere between horrified and absolutely terrified, but – curiously – didn’t push him away. Q just leant against his brother’s side, playfully wresting control of the book from Sherlock, waiting for a response, Sherlock getting himself comfier and sharing actual space with his sibling for the first time since they were very small, and, smirking, flicked his wand to reclaim the book for his own.

Q laughed, whipping his own wand around, trying to grasp it, aware that Sherlock was smiling. Tiredly, and distractedly, but smiling all the same.

The door opened.

Sherlock’s expression fell. He straightened, dislodging Q, letting the book fall to the floor with a somewhat emphatic _thump_.

Before Q could say a word, Sherlock had stood, brushing past the eldest Holmes brother and out, away, leaving Mycroft and Q alone, with no idea what to say.

-

Momentum gathered. The storm waited on the horizon, inches from breaking over everybody’s heads, and everybody _knew_ , they just didn’t know what they were waiting for, precisely.

Albus was constantly out of the school, exams were approaching, everything was moving up to a peak, a single focal point.

Days into weeks; Q had managed to create enough mobiles to keep the Order well and truly connected, had moved into some very complex workings of smaller internet quirks, essentially constructing an online forum. Which for Muggles, would have seemed rather odd, but given a world of Wizards who barely knew of the conceptual _existence_ of the internet, it was a pretty good idea. Conversations from multiple people in multiple locations could occur, without having to depend on phone lines.

After all: Q was a wizard, but like it or not, there were still great swathes of the world where one could never find any phone reception.

Altogether, nothing much happened of interest for a while. Q very nearly ran into Irene Adler at another Order meeting – to his great distaste, she was still a useful asset – which could have ended with a decapitated Veela and one hell of a row, had Remus not had the foresight to warn Bond in advance.

Somewhere in the interim, Hagrid’s pet Acromantula (and really, Q couldn’t think of a weirder concept) died; Q was very tempted to tease Bond by showing him pictures, given that the man was absolutely terrified of the things. It was the only thing, to the best of Q’s knowledge, that Bond was actually frightened of.

Q turned twenty-two in early May, which meant a party at Grimmauld Place and general excitement on all possible fronts; Molly made truly unbelievable cakes, and there were presents and general merriment.

Outside, the sky was perpetually black.

Sherlock’s ‘emergency stash’ of coke was found, hidden in a compartment of a desk in the attic. Apparently, he had only kept it ‘just in case’, and had no active intention of using the stuff, but it really did not help the general mood, as May slid onwards, and the clouds never seemed to part.

Then, of course, Harry nearly killed Draco Malfoy.

-

Q, and the rest of the staff, remained in a state of absolute shock; Snape had swept into the staff room in his usual inimitable style, and informed the congregated staff that Harry Potter had cast some unknown spell that had put Draco Malfoy in the Hospital Wing with severe injuries, which – if Snape had not arrived quickly – could have led to blood loss extreme enough to kill him.

It seemed unbelievable, quite frankly. If nothing else, that kind of spellwork was _terrifyingly_ Dark, and somebody like Harry really should not have known it.

Minerva was stratospherically angry, in tandem with Snape. Q couldn’t help but wonder how Harry had avoided expulsion, and could only assume it had something to do with the fact that Draco would have done the precise same thing if he had been given the chance.

Q collared him within a few hours, hauling him into an unused classroom, shutting the door.

Harry stared at his shoes. Q just watched him, in absolute silence, leaning on the empty desk while Harry slid into a chair.

They remained like that for a very long while indeed, neither speaking.

“I didn’t mean to hurt him,” Harry murmured, a low thrum in the silence. “I didn’t know what the spell did. He… I could hear him crying.”

For a half-second, Harry’s eyes flicked up, heavy with a type of uncertainty that seemed to penetrate through to marrow, stabbing in deeper than Q could imagine. “Harry,” Q said quietly, carefully. “What happened?”

Harry didn’t look up again, staring at his feet. “I heard…” he began, breaking off slightly. “I went in, and he was talking to Moaning Myrtle… he was saying somebody was going to kill him, if he didn’t do as they asked. I… I tried to… he saw me, and just, he panicked I think, shouted for me to leave… I asked if I could help, and he said nobody could.”

The boy trailed off, trembling very slightly, almost managing to keep himself in check and not-quite achieving it. “I don’t know what to do,” he admitted quietly.

Q sighed slightly, feeling a surge of sympathy that he knew he really shouldn’t indulge. “How did Draco end up in the hospital wing?” he asked, just as quietly, keeping everything calm. Harry had presumably been subjected to a great deal of people being extremely angry with him; it was unlikely to help any.

A moment of quiet, and Harry shook his head slightly, almost in disbelief at everything that had happened. “I wouldn’t leave, and he tried to hex me,” Harry told Q, voice beginning to take on the same tremble as his body, everything in him shaking slightly. “I… I started throwing them back, I just wanted to incapacitate him so I could… I just wanted to talk to him, and I couldn’t get him disarmed, and I could hear that he was about to use the Cruciatus curse, and I just yelled the spell, the others were all fine, I didn’t think it would hurt him…”

“Others?” Q interjected, tone a little harder.

Harry went slightly pale.

“Explain,” Q said, in a tone that brooked no refusal. “ _Now_.”

“I found a book of spells, and I didn’t know what they did, and I tried out a few and they were all fine except that one,” Harry told him, in a bit of a rush, and without being even vaguely convincing.

Q raised an eyebrow. “Harry, I’m going to say this just once,” he told the boy carefully. “I can help with a lot of things. I can give you advice, and I will do whatever is in my power to keep you from harm. I know your history with Draco, and I think this needs dealing with.”

“I…”

“No, quiet,” Q told him, a little sharper, a little angrier. “I will not be lied to. I know you’re lying – no, don’t interrupt me, I’m not done – and I don’t know why, but I’m not an idiot. If you’re in trouble, you need to deal with it. If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s absolutely fine, but talk to _somebody_. And finally, do not expect help from people you lie to. It really won’t help you make friends or influence people, do I make myself entirely clear?”

Harry nodded, clearly not trusting himself to speak.

Q sighed slightly, sadly. “I know you would never mean to hurt Draco,” he told Harry, seeing the pain flit across his expression at the name. “Harry, whatever is happening to Draco, it will be dealt with. Professor Snape…”

Harry made a slight face, an angry crease that Q couldn’t help but notice.

“… don’t,” Q warned, edgy. “Dumbledore trusts him, and he is taking care of Draco, as we established over Christmas, yes? Harry, you’re in a relationship with Ginny Weasley, of all people, and have been in a way essentially determined to prove a point. Am I wrong?”

“Professor, that’s not…”

“Fair?” Q completed. “No, I suppose it isn’t. It’s your life, Harry. But you can’t expect him to have not been hurt. I somehow doubt he’d want your help, after that.”

Harry looked understandably upset; there was blood on his hands, almost-literally, and to somebody he had cared so much for. There was also something extremely worrying about Draco Malfoy being in such severe emotional distress; Q made a note to speak to Severus about it, and sent Harry on his way, with a fair amount to think on.

-

Q was reminded, very quickly, how much he disliked Severus Snape.

Bond had always hated the man, and in the light of Sirius being equally vehement, it was difficult to be even vaguely supportive. He was deliberately biased, dispassionate, occasionally cruel, didn’t have the faintest idea what empathy was and didn’t care much for social interactions.

Their conversation was stilted, and relatively unpleasant, and Q was exceptionally grateful when Snape swept away in a somewhat melodramatic billow of robes. The pretension was outstanding.

The problem was that Q suspected something else was going on. Something lingering under the surface, that nobody quite wanted to address; Q considered talking to Draco himself, but given the delicate nature of matters, it seemed more prudent to leave it to a staff member who evidently knew more.

Q kept an eye out for him, though. The Quidditch Final, for example, would be a good moment to take a look at how Draco was doing; everybody in the school went to the final, it was practically ritualistic. Whether you cared for sport or not, it somehow wound up as a universal event.

Which, curiously, Draco was entirely absent from.

The sense of disquiet mounted. Gryffindor won the Cup – with some stellar flying from Ginny Weasley, actually – and Q went straight to Snape’s office.

He bumped into Harry just outside; he had been summoned for detentions, as Q well knew, and he simply raised an eyebrow at Harry’s immediately questioning look. He would find out for himself soon enough, and that was likely to be far more fun.

“Ah. Q.”

Q smiled as best he was able, to Snape’s resolutely set expression. “Afternoon, Severus.”

“What can I do for you?”

It seemed a battle of whose expression could move the least; Q found himself remaining in a terrifyingly fixed position, hoping very hard that he wasn’t betraying a rather notable level of insecurity in the conversation. “I’m concerned about Draco Malfoy,” Q began.

Snape’s mouth twitched downwards, eyes taking on a harder edge. “We discussed this. I believe I have said all that is required,” he replied curtly. “Is that all?”

Q swallowed a nervousness that remained from his old school days, when Snape had been his potions master, and Q had been absolutely terrified of him. “Severus, he’s visibly not well,” Q persisted, as best he could. “I think this is becoming a serious point of concern, now. We know that his family have been in contact with You-Know-Who…”

A sharp, deeply hostile expression stopped Q in his tracks. “If you are insinuating that Malfoy has any connection to his father’s decisions…”

Immediately, Q tried to interject; Snape didn’t let him, and Q bit back angrier phrases, eventually just talking over him. “For Merlin’s sake – he looks like hell these days, Potter heard him crying, as you know, and I trust you to deal with it, but I need to voice that I think this requires further exploration...”

“Your concern is appreciated,” Snape said curtly. “Now, I have work to do. I assure you, I am more than capable of taking care of my students. If that’s all…”

Q nodded curtly, and left, all but seething.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jen sends love! Take care guys, hope you enjoyed.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Penultimate chapter, I believe... 
> 
> Also - I feel I should note that this entire fic is, at least in part, setting the stage for book seven - as, indeed, HP6 is in many regards. There will be unanswered questions, and this chapter in particular does introduce a lot of concepts and general shocks that will be examined at a slightly later stage, so several aspects of this may well come as something of a shock.
> 
> Bear with me. There is a plan. Jen.

When chaos broke out, everything happened very, very quickly. Even in retrospect, it was quite difficult to know what happened or in what order, but there just seemed to be a state of constant motion from a single trigger.

Albus had warned everybody that he was going to be out of Hogwarts for several hours and – for reasons then unknown – believed it would be best, despite his frequent absences in the past, for Bill and Tonks to come on patrol around the castle. They would be joining Filius, Q, Mycroft and Minerva. It was decided – given their history – that Bond and Lupin should remain absent from this particular venture, given that honestly, nobody anticipated anything going wrong.

They found Minerva first.

Ron, Ginny and Neville all but crashed into her, bleating insistently about the Room of Requirements and Malfoy and – most frighteningly – Death Eaters.

The reports were too important to ignore; Minerva sent words around the portraits and ghosts, finding the other Order members in a matter of moments. Q immediately started running to the Astronomy tower, grasping his phone and calling Bond as he did so.

“Hello?”

“James, Death Eaters in the castle,” Q said quickly. “Get everybody here. Minerva’s fireplace is still connected up, anybody who’s there, take them with you.”

Over the phone, Bond’s voice became immediately tense; he relayed instructions out to everybody in the vicinity, audibly preparing himself. “Q, you can’t go and fight, you’ll…”

Q managed a slight laugh. “Don’t be an idiot, James,” he said, a little gently, despite the stress thrumming in his voice. “Of course I’m going there. I need to. It’s Hogwarts, they’re _in_ Hogwarts.”

“I’m coming,” Bond told him, in a voice heavy with promise, and hung up.

Flat-out running. Honestly, Q had never moved so fast in his life. There were already noises coming from the Astronomy Tower, shouts and crashes, curses hitting and rebounding, and obviously all of the usual lot of the Hogwarts students were there – despite everybody’s attempts to stop them interfering – thus meaning somebody had to make sure none of them died.

The first person Q ran into was none other than Draco Malfoy. He was occupied fighting Ginny Weasley, who was perfectly impassive, everything flying everywhere; Q missed the chance to jinx him in deflecting a curse from Alecto Carrow, which rebounded off the wall and narrowly missed Remus.

It was absolute chaos. The Astronomy Tower was nowhere near large enough to hold so many people, especially not when they were all fighting; they were practically matched for numbers, far more Death Eaters than Q had seen before – You-Know-Who had to have been recruiting, given that some were definitely new faces – and it was difficult to keep the wandwork going.

Fenrir Greyback was among the Death Eaters; recognisable anywhere, given that he was most remaining transformed or semi-transformed, and busily attempting to savage almost anybody in his path. Minerva threw a quick hex which threw him backwards, and snapped at Filius to find Snape; he was getting underfoot a bit, given the confined space.

Filius disappeared instantly, and Q took his place against Yaxley, keeping hold of every fragment of information Bond and Lupin had ever managed to impart. He had practised, he was _infinitely_ better than he had once been, and half-smiled to himself in a slightly grim way as he knocked Yaxley’s balance, threw a sideways curse at Amycus Carrow, working in tandem with everybody in the Astronomy Tower.

Greyback was still ripping at anything and anybody in sight, feral snarls, fur more impervious to spells than any other wizard’s; Neville threw curses with surprising dexterity, assisted by Ron Weasley, trying to get him away. Greyback snarled, abruptly replaced by Rowle, who was an absolutely chaotic figure in the melee; Mycroft seemed to be able to hold him off, an immensely welcome presence.

Bill Weasley _screamed_.

Ron and Ginny both turned, the second letting out a sharp cry at the sheer volume of blood that seemed to be _everywhere_ , and Q took a moment or two to establish that it was Greyback; he was bent over the eldest Weasley, literally tearing at his flesh as the screaming abruptly cut off, until a series of curses flew at him from a number of wands.

He deflected several, was thrown several feet through the air by one. There was no time to think or consider any further, no time to see if Bill was alive or dead or just severely injured, no time to save his life if he was dying.

Another Death Eater – one Q didn’t recognise – appeared out of nowhere. Female, dark hair, and Q just kept on throwing spell after spell, deflecting the curses that continued to soar in his direction while Lupin, Minerva, took over the fighting from minutes previously. Combatants seemed to swap places in seconds, abruptly elsewhere without anybody noticing how or why; the Order and DA were actually at something of a disadvantage, given that they cared about one another as a collective, not as single beings.

Gibbon appeared from nowhere, very briefly; a Death Eater Q had only ever really heard of, never seen, he was there for an instant, and a deflected Killing Curse hit him in the chest. He crumpled instantly, and Rowle growled in anger at the stupidity of his own actions.

“Buenas noches, querido.”

Q didn’t think, couldn’t think, not just then and his chest seemed to _burn_ with remembered pain, and laughter that lived somewhere in the furthest aspects of his being and refused to ever leave.

Draco had disappeared, something which worried Q immensely; he glanced around, not really able to afford the time while another bloody Death Eater kept trying to curse him, a grim smile across her red lips.

Q kept himself concentrating as best he could, throwing out spells with practised accuracy, breathing calm and steady, trying to let his body run on instinct given that trying to actually _think_ about anything would probably be of more harm than good.

A spell missed Q by millimetres – the caster was _hooting_ with laughter, infectious and excited and chaos incarnate, not the same woman but another random factor whom Q didn’t recognise – and the man was drawn into a duel an instant later by none other than Q’s indomitable brother, while Q’s Stinging Hex tore through his female combatant’s arm.

The serpentine, ululating motions of the male Death Eater’s head became a little harsher, black eyes utterly cold, and the smile died in situ to be replaced with a grandiose anger that was extraordinary to witness developing.

Mycroft was, of course, the absolute epitome of calm; he barely seemed to be thinking, or even engaged, throwing out spells with a casual ease that was slightly alarming. There was no hint of effort, of difficulty. He just _was_ , and that was almost hypnotic – and he was a match for the black-eyed angry Death Eater, who whooped with joy, and laughed as he threw back and volleyed jets of light, sticking a tongue out at the female Death Eater Q had just hexed as she healed herself quickly and attacked Neville Longbottom.

Q took a moment to breathe, no longer engaged one on one, instead glancing out Shield charms and offensive curses towards anybody he could, before he was abruptly dragged into another direct duel.

Silva. Q felt a rolling edge of sheer, naked determination: he would _not_ be a victim. Not after last year. He had spent a year recovering – physically, and admittedly mentally – from Silva, and it was with no small degree of satisfaction that he duelled with more skill than he had ever possessed before, and Silva’s obsequious and creeping smile faded back as he discovered something more serious.

A flash of light from over Q’s shoulder, and a half-glimpse of blond: Bond was there.

Q couldn’t help a grin. Between Mycroft and Bond, the Order all present and fighting, he couldn’t help but harbour a curious sense of invincibility. A foolish thought, but something comforting nonetheless, and something to keep Q anchored as he continued to work with more speed, dexterity, force, than he had ever managed before.

The Carrows seemed to have disappeared, curiously, but Q really didn’t have time to analyse that in a tremendous amount of detail, given that there was a barrier that seemed to have sprung up at the base of the stairs; somebody yelled about it, and it felt like everybody looked over at once. In a spare moment, Q threw a curse at it, which seemed to sink into the fibre of the barrier rather than impacting properly. A few others tried the same – Bond, Mycroft – before giving up on that and returning to the fight.

Mycroft was concentrating on the dark-haired woman, Bond occupied with the serpentine man who truly seemed to be _living_ on the stream of duelling and action, Lupin battling Rowle, Tonks taking over Silva, everybody throwing curses in all goddamned directions and Q trying to protect students as they reinforced others and dealt with the other few Death Eaters who had joined the fight.

Elsewhere, Neville tried to get through the barrier at the base of the stairs and was immediately rebuffed and thrown through the air with a throttled cry, and Q assumed Dark magic of some description given that Greyback disappeared through it in an instant without undue concern, leaving the mutilated form of Bill Weasley behind.

Jinxes were flying, bouncing off walls, stones cracking and dust flying everywhere, and Q’s jaw tightened as he continued to fight and realised the Death Eaters would never give up. They were there for a reason, some indeterminate reason, and were apparently hell bent on remaining.

“Are you alright?” Bond yelled from next to him, over the hell of curses, Yaxley abruptly disappearing through the barrier to move upstairs; Q threw a curse out, and one of the Death Eaters folded as a stunner hit him directly in the chest, and he crumpled instantly.

Q grinned, and was very nearly hit with a Killing Curse from the dark-haired woman; Bond intervened, throwing up a Shield Charm in tandem with Q, and then – quite suddenly – paused entirely.

After everything that year, Q had thought he would never need to experience the wealth of panic that came with crippling insecurity, of believing for even a _moment_ that he was outclassed, or somehow insufficient. It hadn’t occurred to him that he would ever need to feel that fear again.

Until the moment Bond’s face drained of colour, he murmured _Vesper_ , and was hit in the chest by a fiery red jet of light; he was thrown forcibly backwards, crashing into the wall and collapsing, unconscious.

Instinct and anger and need took over anything more selfish. Q threw out spells with livid intensity, and Merlin alone knew how but Mycroft had somehow started fighting the dark-haired woman whom Q couldn’t bring himself to adhere a name to, and instead he watched as Snape ran through them all, somehow getting through the previously impermeable barrier and running up to the top of the tower.

Mycroft and Lupin were taking the brunt of the fighting, while various DA members fought as best they could, confidence severely knocked by not being invincible – Bill Weasley had fallen silent, Bond was unconscious.

The noise was _incredible_.

The serpentine man crowed, and in tandem with Rowle, cast a few explosive jinxes that hit walls; Bond was in the middle of it all, and Q didn’t know how to get him efficiently out of the way, and there was _so much_ happening.

And then the ceiling fell in.

Q did the only thing that actually occurred to him: transfiguration. He had never been much of a defensive magician, was not naturally adept at duels, but he had taught Transfiguration for a reason, and that reason was that Q understood that form of magic in a way that was instinctive and immediate.

There was a moment of simple shock from everybody present, as the entire room was _flooded_ with butterflies.

Not a single brick hit the ground. Bond, Bill, Neville were entirely safe from harm, and Q took a moment to breathe, his ribs beginning to throb with a rising cry of pain.

Ginny was barely holding her own against Amycus Carrow, who seemed to have reappeared from the upstairs room; Draco, meanwhile, was being slid through the throng by Severus, the former white, a sheen of sweat and the ringing evidence of sheer shock. “You can’t dance forever…”

Two spells hit at once; Q spotted Harry Potter, looking like worlds had ended and were burning, glancing over the battle and throwing curses with devastating force at the things he could see moving.

“ _It’s over, time to go_.”

The voice rang through the room, Death Eaters crowing and thinning and Silva’s eyes met Q’s with a bright spark of simple intensity, and Potter was gone; Q’s eyes darted, and he saw the boy forcing his way through the battle, ignoring everything and batting butterflies out of his face as he tried to reach Snape, Draco.

The butterflies were everywhere; a brisk wave, and they fell to dust, clouding everywhere. Q left the other Order members to deal with the rest, the final stragglers among the Death Eaters, and ran after Harry as his brain finally connected that Harry was supposed to have been with Dumbledore, and Draco was the one to have brought the Death Eaters into the school.

Silva’s laugh was everywhere. “Hasta luego, querido,” he called, and the noise and the screaming and the cries where everywhere all at once, all at once, and Q refused to think about it because he would go mad if he tried.

 _It’s over_.

The sentence was ominous, gave Q pause, and he kept on running; he was quick, the portraits all cooperating without a word, just swinging open to allow Q routes infinitely quicker, and he found himself mere _feet_ away from Snape and Draco. “Severus?” he yelled, heart beating unbearably fast, ribcage screaming from too much in a short space of time, too much to deal with. “ _Severus_.”

Q did not expect to miss a Stunner by _millimetres_.

Snape didn’t pay him much attention, more concerned with Draco, who was visibly - _painfully_ \- out of his depth; they continued running towards the castle gates from a separate entrance to the one Q had popped out of, Hagrid’s hut up ahead, and behind Q a younger voice cried _impedimenta!_ and Q realised that Harry had caught up with impressive speed.

The Carrows were taken care of, at least momentarily, and Q focused his attention on getting Draco Malfoy away from Snape, given that he was quite transparently not the ally everybody had believed him to be.

Helpfully, Harry seemed intent on doing precisely the same thing. “ _Run, Draco_ ,” Snape shouted; Draco obeyed, trying to get _anywhere_ out of range, and Snape turned on Harry without even seeming to _notice_ Q, let alone bother fighting him.

So much the better. Q cast a non-verbal Stunner; Draco toppled forward, without anybody seeming to notice. The darkness swallowed his form, compounded by a deftly wrought Concealment Charm which only stood about a fifty percent chance of working in the first place, and Q barely had time to aim given that the Carrows had got back on their feet again.

Rowle was busy setting Hagrid’s entire _home_ on fire, and Q only just managed to deflect a Killing Curse from Alecto; it rebounded to singe the ground thirty odd feet away, and Q threw out another handful of hexes in the hope that something would impact, mind tending towards Draco more than the Carrow siblings.

Amycus threw a Cruciatus Curse at Harry, and screams rent open the night air, over the crackling of the massive bonfire Hagrid’s home had become, his bellows of anger, the terrified barking of Fang.

Q didn’t bother trying to truly appreciate the true _enormity_ of Snape and Harry fighting, and just tried to get the Death Eaters to stop torturing the boy; Snape yelled something at the Carrows, and they threw another couple of vindictive curses at Q before abandoning everything, and just belting to the gates, coming frighteningly close to seeing Draco but apparently too distracted by Q’s continued spellwork to pay much attention.

Q knew he couldn’t catch up with them, not with his ribs pressing inwards against his lungs and causing white to swim slightly in front of his vision, but in any case, Draco was the more pressing concern. Rowle had made it to the gates and long since vanished, leaving the destruction merrily in his wake, and the Carrows were moving with impressive speed to follow.

A few Death Eaters were unaccounted for, and Q was uncomfortably aware that he was on his own, and could barely breathe.

It was something like instinct, that made Q move when he did. There was no explicable reason for it. In the noise, the spells were inaudible, the movements sporadic and difficult to follow, and Q was trying to get towards Draco and get the boy out of the way, _quickly_ , and abruptly threw himself to the ground.

Q twisted, gasping in pain, trying to concentrate as he saw dark hair and blood red lips. “You married my James?” a voice asked, not taunting, almost curious. There was a moment of bizarre suspension, her watching, Q watching her back, both in speechless disbelief.

The Dark Mark snaked along her elegant wrist, and Q didn’t _care_ who she was, he couldn’t let himself care: he threw a Stunner with all the force at his disposal, only to find his wand skittering out of his grip, and not from any spell that woman had cast.

Q’s eyes followed it for a heartbeat, and the second he looked back, the woman was gone. The surprise at being not-dead made Q blink oddly for a moment, before scrambling for his wand again, watching her run to the gate while Q tried to stay conscious. There was too much to deal with to let pain overrun him now, eyes darting to try and find who in the hell had Disarmed him.

“I’m sorry.”

 _Later_ , Q thought, along with so very many other things that had happened in a very short space of time, in the course of one night. “Deal with Harry,” he said roughly instead, picking his way towards where he expected – where he _hoped_ \- Draco Malfoy would still be lying unconscious.

Q’s breath caught in utter relief.

He threw up green sparks into the air to attract somebody’s attention, and all but collapsed by the side of the young boy, Draco’s Dark Mark starkly drawn across his white skin, everything of him looking exhausted beyond all measure, but very much alive, now protected within the confines of Hogwarts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know any/all thoughts!!! A hell of a lot just happened in a short space of time O.o
> 
> Take care guys, and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Jen.


	17. Chapter 17

Q was transferred up the Hospital Wing along with Draco. He refused to let the boy out of his sight; unconsciousness beckoned with tantalising closeness, but Draco had been involved with the Death Eaters, and in the light of recent events, was potentially in a lot of danger from a lot of very angry people.

The Hospital Wing was buzzing with people, most around one bed. “What happened?” Q asked, voice croaking a little.

“Neville is hurt, so is Filius, but they’ll be alright,” Remus told him quickly, intercepting Q the moment he came in; Minerva kept him propped up, Q dizzy but mostly intact. “Bill… he’ll live, but Greyback savaged him while half-transformed so it’s difficult to tell.”

Q collapsed down into the bed next to Bill, looking over, the Order’s congregation opening to invite him in too. “What is _he_ doing here?!”

Malfoy was, of course, being cared for by Madam Pomfrey; the woman was a world wonder, in Q’s humble opinion, and exchanged a quick glance with Q to confirm that she would look after him, and indeed keep him unconscious until further notice.

“Let him talk,” Q said firmly. “Where’s Albus?”

Everybody shrugged, a general and evident lack of knowledge over the entire subject showing through quite magnificently. “Nobody saw him,” Tonks said after a moment, clearly concerned, fingers knotted in Remus’s. “I’m sure it’s fine, he’s probably dealing with everything, we don’t know what else really happened…”

“ _Harry_.”

Harry Potter trailed in, looking utterly white. Looking, in fact, like his entire world had just collapsed in on itself, and he looked at Draco lying unconscious, and Ginny held onto his hand, and he all but collapsed in the middle of the Hospital Wing.

Q suddenly thought, and hated himself for how belated the thought was: “Where’s James?” he managed, mouth dry, and heard _Vesper_ on the air and somehow wasn’t quite surprised when nobody knew where he was.

For a dizzy moment, Q just wanted to throw up, because _please Merlin no_ , his relationship was not that unstable. He was not that insecure. Bond was better than that. They were _both_ better than the doubt and instability, and it wasn’t _fair_ , because Q had never imagined that the shine would fade out and they would be anything other than perfectly happy.

It had been naïve to ever think otherwise, Q supposed, with a touch of bitterness.

In the interim of thought, of distraction, Q missed the sporadic dialogue where Harry was filled in on events.

He only tuned back in to be told, to understand, that Albus Dumbledore was dead.

“ _No_ ,” he breathed, blood draining from his face, Harry’s expression finally making sense and Remus making a noise like something dying, and Tonks ashen and Minerva letting out a strangled gasp of absolute horror and nothing made sense any more, because Albus Dumbledore _could not be dead_.

Q sat, numb, for several moments.

Harry blamed Draco, blamed Severus, and Q couldn’t think or breathe for a moment, and the stories poured out and Q just shook his head slightly and everybody shot looks of loathing at Draco’s unconscious body, and the world was swimming and Q’s chest hurt like hell. “Minerva,” he asked quickly, while everybody swapped stories.

Minerva looked like she was falling part slightly, for the first time in Q’s memory. He quickly explained about Draco, that the boy needed help, needed to be looked after, and she nodded sharply and gave her firm assurance that she would ensure his protection. “Speak to Potter?” she asked in a low voice. “We need to know what he and Albus were doing, and with Draco…”

“Yes,” Q agreed, still finding it hard to breathe quite in the right order. “Of course. Don’t you…?”

Minerva shook her head once, sharply. “You know him better, and I need to organise what we do next. The Ministry will doubtless be difficult enough as it is. Take Potter now, and inform me of the outcome.”

Q nodded, and stood awkwardly; Poppy had poured a decent number of pain potions down his throat, which was more than enough to at least anaesthetise the physical pains. “Harry,” he said quietly, with as much emphasis as he could muster. “I need to speak to you.”

Harry glanced over him, expression mutinous and empty, and gave a sharp nod. His gaze flicked to Malfoy for the briefest of moments, before his hand finally pulled away from Ginny’s, and he followed Q out into the corridor.

A panicked Tobin found them, almost instantly. “Professor Q, it’s Dumbledore, Professor Dumbledore, and the Astronomy Tower and…”

Q held up a hand, stalling his speech, smiling very faintly at the fact that Tobin’s hair was at shoulder length now, curled perfectly, his dress a delightful shade of blue that Q could have sworn had originally belonged to Annette on the first floor. “I need somewhere to talk quietly, somewhere close, I can’t go too far.”

Tobin blinked hugely, jaw trembling very slightly, and nodded.

Harry and Q followed the young portrait in silence, Q giving him a low thanks when a painting of a large oak tree swung forward. “I’ll tell you more soon,” he promised. “Get the word around – Draco Malfoy needs to be watched for, and if you can find James, tell him I’ll find him in the hospital wing. Dumbledore is dead. The school needs protection.”

It seemed as though Tobin had become a Muggle painting for an instant, frozen in front of the oak tree, numb. “I understand,” he replied, in quiet horror. “I… okay.”

Q didn’t talk further, just stepped into the annexe and let the portrait fall shut. “Tell me,” Q told Harry simply, in a voice filled with edges. “You were with Dumbledore. What were you two doing?”

“What’s Malfoy doing here?” Harry returned, with just as many sharp edges as Q. “He was… I can’t tell you about what we were doing.”

“Then I will not tell you about Draco,” Q parried.

They stood in silence a moment, an impasse. “Prof… Q, sorry,” Harry said, running a hand through his messed hair, swinging quickly through anger to numbness and back again. “I can’t tell you what we were doing, Dumbledore and I had an agreement, and I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

There was something in Harry’s voice, something solid and incontrovertible; he would not be swayed, and Q knew it was not his place. “Alright,” he replied, breathing out slightly. “I…”

“Draco tried to kill Dumbledore.”

The silence was absolute, and Q spent a moment just trying to understand what Potter had even said. “What?” he mumbled. “What do you mean?”

Harry was no longer pretending he couldn’t stop shaking, his hands wouldn’t remain still, and he stared at Q with a desperate intensity as he explained that he had been on the Astronomy Tower when Dumbledore died, that it had been Draco, that it made sense now because he hadn’t wanted to kill Dumbledore, he never had, but he had been threatened, and…

“The Malfoy family,” Q breathed.

He was out of the annexe in a moment, Harry following on his heels. “I can’t run – go, get Remus, Tonks, anybody who’s free,” Q snapped at him; Harry looked confused, certainly, but ran as commanded while Q moved as best he could, tired but coping, and breathlessly frightened for people he had never met and very little desire to.

Tonks made it there first, looking frantic. “What is it?”

“You-Know-Who was threatening the Malfoys. If Draco didn’t make it back, they are potentially going to be in extreme danger. We need to find them, if we can.”

In Tonks’s defence, she empathised entirely; yet, nobody knew where the Death Eaters were, not any more. They moved too fast, and the Malfoys were known to be some of You-Know-Who’s staunchest supporters. They would never find the two Malfoy parents in time.

Q let out a slow breath, continuing to wend his way back to the Hospital Wing while Tonks related everything to Remus, and Harry remained looking extremely white until Remus told him, quite kindly, to go to the Gryffindor Tower to speak to his friends.

In the Hospital Wing, everything had calmed; Poppy had thrown out everybody who didn’t need to be there, the teachers were all occupied speaking to the Ministry, and it allowed the last few to congregate and discuss and work through what they could possibly do next.

Q sat himself down by Draco’s still-unconscious form, to find – of all people – Molly Weasley fretting over him. “He’ll be fine soon,” she assured Q, jaw tight and utterly businesslike, her own son being tended by his fiancée, and Q was forever shocked by the sheer capacity of Molly Weasley to _care_.

“ _Q_.”

Abruptly, Q was being accosted by somebody relatively short and extremely brusque. “You’re not bloody invincible, you idiot,” a voice told him, with pervasive irritation. “A year of dealing with you, and you cock all of it up in less than twenty-four hours. You’ll be fine, but you’re a complete idiot.”

“I concur.”

It had to be delusion. Delusion or concussion or something similar, because Merlin above, _John Watson_ could not be in Hogwarts; to the best of Q’s knowledge, he would probably be the very first Muggle in history to enter the hallowed school.

Not to mention that Sherlock, of all people, was _also_ in Hogwarts. The man had sworn, since age eleven, that he would never set foot in Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Q moved past John, and threw his arms around his elder brother.

As always, Sherlock stood there like a plank, and looked relatively uncomfortable. “Why in _Merlin’s name_ are you here?” Q asked, still hanging onto him. “And where’s Mycroft, I haven’t seen him since…”

Sherlock shook his head sharply, prising Q from his front. “Mycroft is presently dealing with some less promising aspects of this battle. Given the questionable security now remaining in Grimmauld Place in the light of Dumbledore’s death, the building has been fully evacuated. We have retrieved all we could. The Order are working on a new location, but for now, it appears that the safest place for us to remain is Hogwarts.”

The catch in Sherlock’s voice was almost inaudible. He was doing remarkably well, in fact; Q couldn’t bear looking at him, reading the different facets of grief that simply didn’t suit Sherlock, didn’t fit with the idea of a brother Q thought he knew so well.

Q focused another glance elsewhere, and found himself part-recoiling at the sight of Irene Adler, curled in one of the hospital wing beds, hair in loose convulsions around her face and skin terrifyingly pale.

“What’s…”

“For another time,” Tonks told him, tone placatory, hand extended to him in a quiet comfort.

Bond was still absent.

_I’m sorry_

Q didn’t want to believe it, but he did, and he couldn’t make the thought leave because this had always been his fear, every single fear, of the woman who had always been there at the edges of Bond’s dreams and the shadow that crossed, the woman who had once been, whom Bond had loved beyond sense and reason, and Q could never quite believe he had replaced. The woman who – of course – looked a little like Irene Adler, now Q thought about it, all dark hair and red lips and smile and oh _Merlin_ , it hurt to think about.

Irene’s lips were parted in her sleep, and her breath was curiously shallow.

He swallowed back the inevitable questions, and found something else to explore: “Who were the other Death Eaters? I haven’t seen them before.”

Remus’s fist clenched slightly. “I take it you saw Vesper Lynd?”

Q’s stomach convulsed. “Yes,” he managed, voice closed-off. “She spoke to me briefly. Could have killed me, and didn’t. I’m not sure what to make of that, actually. The dark-haired one? Short, the one who was laughing?”

The voice that answered was the very last one Q had ever expected to hear, voice neutral and yet still somehow edged. “An extremely unpleasant human being,” Sherlock told him flatly, gaze intense and hard. “I believe he must have broken out of Azkaban last year, and Mycroft decided to conceal that particular fragment of information from me.”

Everybody in the room was utterly hooked on Sherlock’s words, Fleur pausing, Molly watching with skin white, Tonks’s hair a mess of black and white and threaded grey, John’s expression terrifyingly neutral. “James Moriarty. Imprisoned in Azkaban for the murder of several Muggles, and interferences within the Muggle world. We became somewhat… tangled, shall we say, and given the current tenor of response, I would assume Miss Adler became similarly enmeshed. He believes me a curiosity, if you will – he admires all I do, but detests where I have chosen to expend those energies. My antithesis, of sorts. Mercifully incarcerated – with Mycroft’s interference – to ensure that he could not cause me harm.”

Q just stared. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, after a moment, unable to quite believe the true length and breadth of secrets his family could hold. “ _Merlin_. He’s with the Death Eaters?”

“I must admit surprise, I believed he would remain an independent agent,” Sherlock mused, eyebrow arched, a study in passive boredom. “I will need to have words with Mycroft, I should have been informed the moment he was active once again.”

Q rubbed his face, hands through his hair, glasses off to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Alright,” he murmured. “What else do we need to know? Severus has presumably vanished?”

Remus nodded sharply, expression contorted. “We can’t track them. Minerva and the others are handling the Ministry, but they may close the school.”

“ _No_ ,” Q returned, surprising himself with his vehemence; Sherlock smiled next to him, almost invisibly, and Tonks nodded in absolute agreement. “And… well, the funeral, I suppose…”

“Minerva will handle that,” Tonks told him, visibly trying not to cry, Remus sliding his hand into hers. “We’re all staying in the school now, on patrol. We can’t risk any more attacks, the students…”

A voice interrupted from the doorway. “The school has been re-secured, the Vanishing Cabinet gone,” Mycroft explained, looking so perfectly in control; this he could handle, _this_ was where Mycroft could feel at home, when dealing with true crisis on a wide scale. “Albus’s body has been moved, as I’m sure Hagrid explained when he was here. We have sourced a location for a new Headquarters, and the students have been sequestered in their respective dormitories until we can confirm the status of the school as a whole.”

Q watched his brothers exchanged glances; Sherlock looked at him with a look more intensely distilled than even Q had ever seen it, as though he could see through everything Mycroft was, and understand the only person who could _never be_ understood.

“Later,” Mycroft said simply. “Q, Bond is on his way, he has been occupied in dealing with the final defensive measures – Molly, Arthur is similarly arriving imminently. The Burrow has been elected, I apologise for the lack of warning, but under the circumstances…”

Molly literally waved him off. “I assumed as much,” she told him simply. “I’ll let Charlie know…”

“Q?”

Bond stood in the doorway of the Hospital Wing; Poppy had given up entirely on trying to let her patients have rest and recovery – both main occupants were completely unconscious anyway – and instead, everybody watched as Bond didn’t try and approach his husband, and instead held up a cat basket.

All tension diffused from Q’s body in an instant. “ _Whisp_ ,” he said, with more shock, with more relief, than he knew he could feel; he caught Poppy’s expression in time to not open the basket, but noted Whisp’s alarmed electric blue. “It’s alright, promise,” he murmured, before he stood, facing his husband.

They stood in silence for a moment, everybody busying themselves behind them. “Albus,” Q said softly, and Bond just nodded, his own face set with lines that Q could have sworn hadn’t been there even an hour previously. “I thought you…”

“I know,” Bond interjected, and said the one word Q never wanted to hear again for as long as he lived: “Later.”

Remus and Tonks were talking behind him, Mycroft dictating and Sherlock mutinously silent in a way Q entirely understood, as speech washed over Q’s head, Bond’s words somehow falling short of the comfort he needed. “I need to work out what’s going on first, then we’ll talk properly,” he raised his voice, addressing the rest of the Order. “We need to all talk – staff room, preferably, Minerva is nearly done with the Ministry delegation. I assume there’s a good reason Draco Malfoy is here too?”

Q tuned in at the name, returning to the rest of the conversation at large. “I’ll explain that part, but he needs protection,” he said, as emphatically as he could, once again – he knew full damn well that Draco Malfoy was probably in the most danger of most people in the school at that moment.

Bond nodded his understanding. “Fine. Staff room now – Poppy, you’re happy to stay here?”

“Obviously,” she said primly, and moved back to Bill’s side, taking over from a rather alarmed Fleur.

Even Mycroft did as bidden, to Q’s surprise. Sherlock and John followed, given that they had nowhere else to go, and gradually, the numbers dwindled; Bond remained behind a moment, leaving himself and Q, both of them rather lost.

Q had thought the worst, with no reason to do so.

Bond was now one of the most key members of the Order of the Phoenix, currently the only group standing against You-Know-Who.

“Let’s go,” Q said quietly, and walked past Bond, leaving the latter in the middle of the Hospital Wing, watching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that, ladies and gentlemen, ends Alea Iacta Est! I hope you have all enjoyed, and would love to hear what you guys think.
> 
> Yes, there are a _lot_ of unanswered questions, and it has been left in an extremely uncertain place for everybody; as I'm sure you guys know, the last installment will be emerging. It is going to be massive, you have been warned, and everything will be tackled in due course there.
> 
> Thank you all for your support thus far, and I hope you'll be back when part three arrives!
> 
> Take care! <3 Jen.

**Author's Note:**

> For Lex, as always.
> 
> Continued in "Memento Vivere", the third and final installment of this crossover.


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